A quick reminder that Fryer Library is closed on Monday, October 7 2013, for the Labour Day Public holiday. You can check the opening hours for all UQ Libraries online.

Join the Friends of Fryer to meet the author of Happily ever after: Celebrating Pride and prejudice and President of the Jane Austen Society of Australia (JASA), Susannah Fullerton, next Friday, 11 October, 2013.

This photo was one of seven recently donated to Fryer Library, each depicting railway related history from Queensland. The elephants belonged to Wirths' Circus, which travelled Australia by train from the earliest days of the railways in the 1880s up until the circus' demise in 1963.

The 2013 Fryer Award winner, Dr William Hatherell, will present the first results of his current research at an EMSAH seminar this Friday, September 20.

Dr Hatherell's research focuses on Professor JJ Stable and Associate Professor FW Robinson ('Doc Robbie'), the two leading figures in the establishment of English as a university discipline in Queensland through their pioneering work at the University of Queensland from the 1920s to the 1950s.

The Fryer Library congratulates UQ alumnus and Brisbane resident Kate Morton for taking out the 2013 People's Choice Queensland Book of the Year with her third novel The Secret Keeper. A mystery, set in London and shifting between past and present, it has already received high praise and topped bestseller lists across the globe.

The Fryer Library's collections of Queensland political organisations and student activists groups are supported by a growing collection of 'ephemera', which is library-speak for written or printed material that is usually created for a short-term purpose.

Political ephemera collected by Fryer ranges from how to vote cards, posters, buttons, bumper stickers, and t-shirts, to a newly acquired Kevin Rudd tote bag. These collections are still referred to as the 'Fryer Vertical Files' (FVFs), a reference to the filing cabinets they were once stored in.

The Fryer Library has a new website and we want to know what you think about the changes.

The new website aims to make it much easier to find information about visiting Fryer, the collections, and our community.

New online journal The Fashion archives, which launched last week, focuses on Queensland fashion stories, past and present, by exploring heritage collections from public and private collections, large and small.

Fryer Library's collections provide many opportunities to examine the Queensland sugar industry's labour issues and to catch an arresting glimpse into the lives of South Sea Islanders at home and in Australia. 2013 marks the 150th anniversary of the first arrival of South Sea Islanders in Queensland to provide low paid, indentured labour for the new state's fledgling primary industries, notably sugar and cotton.

The 2013 issue of Fryer Folios has arrived! Focussing on art, the issue includes: