In 1910, Chief Librarian Edmund LaTouche Armstrong built the biggest domed reading room in the world and wanted to install state-of-the-art technology - the new Dewey Decimal System.

But Amos Brazier, Armstrong's fierce Chief Classifier, stood in the way. Brazier dismissed the gigantic dome as folly. He rejected the American Dewey system because it denied Australia's intellectual and creative self-sufficiency at a time - just after Federation - when such independence most needed to be asserted.

The increasingly personal battle between the monumentalist Armstrong and the intellectual Brazier divided the library, enraged their political masters and brought both men's careers to the point of destruction.

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Presented at the State Library of Victoria in 1999, this critically acclaimed play was directed by Humphrey Bower, designed by Shaun Gurton and performed by Ian Scott, Ernie Grey, Ben Rogan and Ruth Schoenheimer. The Terms & Grammar of Creation received the Green Room Award for Outstanding Fringe Production of 1999.

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