TroveMosaic is an experimental interface for the Trove picture search. Enter a query, and it will build a mosaic from the top 500 records. Group the results by title, collection or decade for different views, and click an image to see it in its home collection.

This project is the work of Mitchell Whitelaw, part of an ongoing project creating generous interfaces for digital cultural collections. Along with the Manly Images interface, TroveMosaic was funded by the State Library of New South Wales.

TroveMosaic requires a modern, standards-compliant browser like Chrome, Safari or Firefox. It is designed for desktop browsers and probably won't work perfectly on mobile or tablet devices (yet).

Trove picture search contains over 7.3 million images on almost every conceivable subject. Hundreds of organisations contribute material including the University of Queensland Library, Queensland Department of Public Works, Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads, Geoscience Australia, Royal Geographical Society of South Australia, Australian Academy of Science, Australian Institute of Marine Science, Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, CSIRO, and the Defence Science and Technology Organisation.

Fryer Library was delighted to recently add to its collection a silk theatre handbill. With black print on cream silk and a fringed edging, it is a very early example of this genre in Brisbane.

The handbill dates from the earliest days of Brisbane's first permanent theatre and music venue. Mason's Theatre (also known as Mason's Concert Hall) was built in Elizabeth Street by George B Mason, music and dance teacher. The theatre opened on 25 January 1865 with the farce Poor Piccadilly. Six months later, Lyster's Royal Italian and English Opera Company performed there.

Lyster's Royal Italian and English Opera Company. Subscription season of three nights, commencing July 20 1865 Brisbane : Courier General Printing Office, 1865. 39 x 15 cm.

The arrival of Lyster's Opera Company in Brisbane was reported on with much excitement in the newspapers of the time, and was seen as a mark of Brisbane's progress. William Lyster had brought his opera company to Australia from the USA in 1861. A Melbourne-based company, it toured Australia and New Zealand with great success, presenting about 42 full-length operas between 1861 and 1868. In July 1865 the company visited Brisbane. The Brisbane Courier of 7 July 1865 referred to 'the bona fide appearance of the best opera company that has yet attempted the lyric drama in the Australian colonies'. It continued, 'The advent of the Lyster Opera Company might almost be recognized as one of the significant signs of the rapid progress of the colony'. The Darling Downs Gazette & General Advertiser of 12 July 1865 enthused in similar vein, 'It is scarcely 6 years since we were separated from New South Wales, and yet our city is now deemed worthy of a visit by the Lyster Opera Company'.

The performances advertised over the nights of 20th to 22nd July 1865 at Mason's Theatre were Gounod's Faust, Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots, and Bellini's La Sonnambula. These were three of the company's most popular performed works, with Les Huguenots, which premiered in Melbourne in November 1862: 'regarded as inaugurating a new epoch of the Australian stage'. (Margaret Seares, 'Opera', Currency Companion to Music and Dance in Australia, Sydney : Currency Press, 2003 : 470.)

It is not clear whether or not the citizens of Brisbane were as appreciative of Lyster's Royal Italian and English Theatre Company as the critics of the time thought they should be. There are reports of less than full houses, and hints that Mr Mason was taking a risk in bringing the company to Brisbane. But the silk handbill, with its fringed elegance, is a striking record of the early days of Brisbane and one of Australia's first touring opera companies.

- Cathy Leutenegger.

Music manuscripts and theate programs, such as this silk handbill, will be on display as part of The Friends of Fryer Christmas event next Wednesday evening, 28th November 2012.

8 November marks 165 years since author Bram Stoker was born in Dublin, Ireland. Fryer Library holds two letters written by Stoker. The first dates from December 1884 and was sent to Edmund Hodgson Yates; the other dates from July 1903 and was sent to Edmund's son, Edmund Smedley Yates.

Shown here is a portion of the 1884 letter. Stoker and Yates knew each other through the theatrical business; at this point in his life, Stoker was working as personal assistant for English actor/manager Sir Henry Irving and as business manager of the Lyceum Theatre, owned by Irving. Irving was in America between September 1894 and April 1895, and Stoker sent this letter from the Bellevue Hotel in Philadelphia. Correspondence with Irving is also held in the Yates collection.

These two documents are part of a collection of over 600 letters held in the Edmund Yates collection (UQFL314). A print guide to the papers was compiled by Peter Edwards and Andrew Dowling and is available in the Fryer reference collection as well as via UQ eSpace. The Stoker/Irving correspondence is part of a wider collection of theatre-related correspondence within the collection.

Another significant set of letters covers journalism (Yates was co-founder of weekly newspaper The World); further information on the journalistic side of the collection can be found in the article by Peter Edwards published in Found in Fryer: stories from the Fryer Library collection.

- Penelope Whiteway.

For this week's #collectionfishing theme of horses, we discovered a volume of Melbourne Cup stories "from grave to gay, from lively to severe". Shimmer of Silk, by Robert P Whitworth and W A Windus, was purportedly the book of the season in 1893!

While most of our iconic images of adventurous archaeologists are born from page or screen (perhaps, Cairo Jim, Indiana Jones, or Murder in Mesopotamia?) this September, Fryer's treasure of the month explores the life of John Henry Iliffe - a noted British Archaeologist and the first curator of the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum - whose life, archaeological work, and contribution to the Antiquities collection at UQ are captured in his papers…

In conjunction with the treasure of the month display in the Fryer Reading Room, the R.D. Milns Antiquities Museum is currently exhibiting three artefacts from Mr Iliffe's excavations, which were also generously donated by his family.

Frank Moorhouse won the Fiction category of the Queensland Literary Awards last night for his book Cold light, the final in his Palais de Nations trilogy. In accepting the prize, Mr Moorhouse said:

The Queensland Prize because of its history as a long existing prize, the dismaying axing of it by the new Queensland government and now as a prize reborn is, I think this year, now Australia's most Noble of the Literary Prizes - it is the only prize created by the citizens of the state, in fact, by citizens throughout Australia - it is not the Premiers Prize it is the Citizens Prize.

And of all the prizes I have won for my writing the winning of this one has made me the proudest.

Fryer Library holds an extensive archive of papers from Frank Moorhouse, including drafts, notes and research material for his books and writings, going back to The Americans, baby (1972). As well as literary material there is also a large amount of personal material including correspondence and photographs.

- Cathy Leutenegger.