Esteemed environmental scientist and writer, Professor David Hewitt Miller was referred to by his colleagues as the “Scientist’s scientist”. Professor Miller taught seminars and courses in hydrology, climatology, and meteorology at Universities across the United States, and three times here at the University of Newcastle as a Fulbright lecturer in 1966, 71 and 79. On August 17, 1979 Professor Miller was awarded a Doctor of Letters (honorary) by Chancellor Sir Bede Callaghan in recognition of his contributions to scholarship. The University is grateful for Professor Miller’s contribution to academia and for his most generous bequest, resulting in the Special Collections Reading Room, which acknowledges his connection with, and time spent at the University of Newcastle.

The University Library thanks the Friends of the University for their generous contributions to the reimagining of the Auchmuty Library roof terrace — resulting in a new learning environment designed to allow students to read and socialise outdoors, launched in 2014.

We warmly thank the late Professor Emeritus Godfrey Tanner, Foundation Professor in Classics, here pictured with the oldest book in the collection, Eusebius, Ecclesiasticae Historiae, published in Paris in 1544. He generously assisted in financing the restoration of this volume and also in the restoration of three other treasures from the Renaissance Collection, John Calvin's Two and Twenty Lectures upon the First Five Chapters of Jeremiah. London : Imprinted by Felix Kyngston, for Nathanael Newbery, 1620., Bishop Hugh Latimer's Frutefull sermons London : Printed by John Daye, 1584, and Nicholas Culpeper [Herbal] Physicall Directory ; or, A translation of the London Dispensatory Made by the Colledge [sic] of Physicians in London: Printed for Peter Cole, 1649.

Mrs Winsome Pender, wife of the late Ian Walter Pender (1923-1988) placed custodianship of the Pender Archive to the University of Newcastle's Special Collections. The Archive consists of 2,562 individual architectural projects and includes many beautiful original water colour drawings of private and public buildings across northern NSW. The collection comprises the achievements of three generations of the Pender family as architects in Maitland, spanning 125 years from the 1860s to the 1980s and represents the archive of the longest surviving architectural firm in the English speaking world.