We’re on a mission. Libraries for the nation. We can do this*

Abstract Using primary source material, contemporary accounts and personal recollection the author traces the emergence of the National Library of Australia’s confident view of itself as a library for all other Australian libraries, with a special responsibility for computer-based bibliographic control systems at the centre of national library cooperation. The paper focuses on the period 1968–1979, a time of unprecedented growth in library and information services – a time when the computers came.