On this last day of our 75th anniversary year, we in the John Oxley Library, and other sections of Heritage Collections, would like to wish all of you a very Happy New Year. 2009 was a landmark year with Q150 celebrations, White Gloves Tours of Oxley collection items around the state, and numerous activities and events in which … Read more
The John Oxley Library’s Original Materials collection, which includes personal papers, business records, church records, station records, photographs, works of art, digital stories and oral histories, is now discoverable on the State Library’s catalogue, One Search. This means you can now do a search simultaneously for a range of published and original materials on any … Read more
With Christmas just around the corner we thought it would be timely to highlight some of the wonderful Christmas related material held in the John Oxley Library. This material includes photographs, Christmas cards, ephemera and posters depicting the celebration of Christmas in Queensland through the years. Christmas poster published by the Disabled Men’s Association of Australia, post World War … Read more
Did you know that up until 1958 the Brisbane City Botanic Gardens included a zoo? The Zoological Gardens contained over time, a bear pit, a deer and Australian animal compound and several aviaries. In its half century of existence, over a million people reportedly visited the attractions. There were Capuchin monkeys, baboons, kangaroos, wallabies, deer, … Read more
Continuing our series on the history of the John Oxley Library, in this, our 75th anniversary year. In 1994, the Queensland Heritage Retrieval Project was established, to be led by the John Oxley Library, with the aim of appealing for Queensland historical material from overseas, in particular from Britain. A range of significant material has … Read more
The Queensland History Teachers’ Association held their annual professional development day for Primary and Lower Secondary School Teachers at the State Library of Queensland on Monday 7th December. The theme of the day was “Exploring History through SOSE and Humanities in Primary and Lower Secondary Classrooms”. Dr Brian Hoepper, well known in the world … Read more
In early 2010 the Queensland Writers Centre will commemmorate the end of an era when it moves from the Metro Arts Building in downtown Brisbane to new premises in the State Library of Queensland’s South Bank building. Dr Leanne Day, the State Library’s Queensland Authors and Legal Deposit Librarian, recently attended the a function at the cnetre … Read more
Continuing our series on the history of the John Oxley Library, in this, our 75th year. The issue of who should have responsibility for the collection and housing of Queensland public records would cause on-going conflict and confusion and would not be resolved until the late 1950s. In November 1959, a separate Archives Department was … Read more
Picture Queensland has reached 50,000 images. The 50,000th image features Lilian Willis Snr. and other members of the Gulumba Dance Group from Townsville and Palm Island performing at the Laura Aboriginal Dance Festival in June 2009. The image was taken by photographer Sarah Scragg. Picture Queensland, State Library’s collection of digital images, started in 2002. … Read more
Another two Discovering Queensland courses have finished on a high note with participants’ feedback being overwhelmingly positive. The one criticism that keeps surfacing at the end of each successive course is that they are never long enough and the sessions are too short. This is high praise indeed, considering each course has been six weeks … Read more