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'Creatio ex nihilo', or the 'creation out of nothing' of the Archbishop Goold special collection at Mannix Library, is one of the unanticipated but very welcome benefits of the library 's involvement with the 'Goold Project' .2 This Australian Research Council-funded Discovery Project aims to explore the cultural contributions of James Alipius Goold to colonial Melbourne. Goold had amassed a significant personal library during the course of his lifetime and on his death his books were left to the diocesan library. Over the years this collection of books was variously dispersed and largely forgotten. However, when staff at Ma1mix Library became involved with the Goold Project, many items with Goold provenance were re-discovered. Prior to the earliest phase of the project in 2016, staff at Mannix Library had no way of knowing whether any item in its collection had previously belonged to the former Archbishop of Melbourne …