ONE Hundred

It's the rare piece of paper that turns overnight from junk mail to important historical document, but that's exactly what happened to leaflets distributed by Liberal party figures in the seat of Lindsay during the 2007 federal election. The faked pamphlets, purportedly from the "Islamic Australia Federation", suggested that the Labor party supported the Bali bombers. Only three years later, one of these pamphlets will take centre stage as one of 100 carefully selected objects in the Mitchell Library's ONE Hundred exhibition.

The library opened on 9 March, 1910 as a memorial to book collector David Scott Mitchell (1826–1907), who bequeathed the library its foundation collection. In the 100 years since, the vaults of the library have become home to an immensity of photographs, manuscripts, paintings, books, newspapers, clothing, journals and other cultural artefacts. In celebration of its centenary, the Mitchell Library will display 100 selected objects that reflect aspects of Australian life.

"We wanted 100 items and we wanted to show variety," says Paul Brunton, head curator of the free exhibition, which will last, appropriately, for 100 days. "We had to demonstrate an immense date span – from the 15th century until the present day. We could have had 100 exhibitions of 100 objects, so rich is the library's history."

The show includes an original watercolour of the cover of an Australian pulp fiction novel from 1942; a 1969 architect's sketch for a restaurant at Kingsford Smith Airport; and a WWI panorama faked by photographer Frank Hurley in 1918. Some of the artefacts have no great monetary value. "These objects are not all great treasures, although we do have a fare selection of those," Brunton explains. "Some of the exhibits are just simple objects that we have used to reflect a cultural aspect in an interesting way."

At the other extreme, there's Edward Close's sketchbook of early 19th century watercolours – a piece that was purchased last year for close to one million dollars. "It has been in private hands for years and this exhibition will be the first public viewing," Brunton says. "We also have the Western Australian inverted swan stamp of which there are only two in Australia, the first printed map of the Australian east coast from 1772, and a drawing of the Southern Cross from the early 1500s."

The exhibition contains a fair slew of sensitive material. There is the infamous picture (left), taken by a tourist, of police killing Ron Levi on Bondi Beach in 1997. "There are exhibits relating to the foundation of white Australia and information from war protest movements right up to Iraq," Bunton reveals. "We don't make judgements. We just collect. It's up to other people to form opinions on what is displayed."

A fraudulent electoral leaflet tailored to the xenophobic may say a lot about Australia, but a mass of less inflamatory junk mail has its place in the show too. "We have a display of [all] the junk mail that is delivered to a Sydney home in one year. It's 28.6kg of paper. That's an interesting little snapshot of social history." Erin Moy