If you happen to be heading down under any time soon, there is an exhibition at the National Library of Australia in Canberra that you’ll definitely want to check out called “Handwritten.” It includes letters, diaries and other handwritten documents from the likes of Einstein, Beethoven, Galileo and more contemporary, Australian people like Nick Cave, whose diary is below:

Here’s the intro to the article about the exhibition, which I found rather chilling.

In Peter Carey’s award-winning novel True History of the Kelly Gang, the novelist metamorphosed into an archivist, claiming to be publishing 13 parcels of soiled and rust-stained papers supposedly written by Ned Kelly in the unmistakeable grammar and syntax we recognise from the bushranger’s famous Jerilderie Letter.

Kelly’s papers might have been damp and ripped, according to Carey’s artful deceit. But at least they could have endured feasibly for more than a century without seeming preposterous.

Compare that to Carey’s own manuscript. The Booker prize-winning author composed his novel on a laptop that is a prized item in the State Library of Victoria’s collection.

You can see the laptop. But what you cannot see, contemplate or critique is Carey’s manuscript – his revisions, different drafts, the substitution of one word for another, perhaps an entire passage angrily crossed out. All that compositional magic lies mouldering inside the machine, too delicate to access in case it is changed or lost.

Fortunately, the exhibition in Canberra is all about paper, with no laptops on display!

[Dr. Rachel Buchanan, a historian] believes no present writers or scientists could be included in an equivalent exhibition in 2112. ”We are on an abyss now. It’s a real turning point in the discussion about what archives are, and what can actually be kept.”

Let’s hope some writers are still printing out drafts!

Read more: Writer’s craft is now a ghost in the machine.