The theme for this year's Harmony Day is Many Stories - One Australia.

The Department of Immigration and Citizenship, who organises the celebrations of Harmony day each year on the 21st of March, describes the importance of sharing stories in celebrating Australia's diversity:

Let's go beyond the cover of the book and wander through the pages of each other's story. It's a way we can learn and understand.

An almost capacity crowd attended the first Friends of Fryer event for 2013, "Antarctica: Bravery in the landscape" last week.

The panel discussion, hosted in conjunction with the UQ Art Museum, focused on the artwork of Linde Ivimey. In particular, her sculptures of ice warrior figures, which are a striking feature of the Art Museum's current exhibition "If Pain Persists… Linde Ivimey Sculpture".

Friday, the 8th of March is International Women's Day. Celebrated internationally on this date since 1913, Women's Day recognises women for their achievements, reflects on past struggles and accomplishments, and looks forward "to the opportunities that await future generations of women".

The 2013 Hazel Rowley Literary Fellowship was awarded to Stephany Steggall last night at Adelaide Writers' Week.

Amongst Fryer's manuscript collections is a folder of papers relating to the 1948 St Patrick's Day clash in Brisbane. The papers form part of the collection of Connie Healy, whose husband, Mick Healy, was secretary of the Trades & Labor Council of Queensland at the time. Mick Healy was the leader of the protest march that was met with such violence by the Queensland police.

As the 2013 academic year commences and UQ campuses welcome new students this week, here is the 'undergraduate look' from ninety-one years ago, courtesy of the Fryer Library University of Queensland photograph collection.

In the seventeenth century, many members of the upper classes collected objects for 'cabinets of curiosities', amusing their guests with rare and unusual specimens of natural history. Shells were one of the most popular objects among collectors, and in the eighteenth century, as major voyages of discovery made available new and previously unrecorded species, these shells came to be studied in a more scientific way.

The Fryer Library is open on this Saturday the 26th of January, but closed for the Australia Day Public holiday on Monday, 28th of January.

You can check all of UQ Library's opening hours online.