Striking gold in the donation bin
UQ Alumni Book Fair volunteers share their best-ever find.
The beloved annual UQ Alumni Book Fair will return this Labour Day long weekend, 2–5 May 2025 – an event that last year raised over $226,000 for scholarships and research at UQ and united just under 100,000 pre-loved books with new owners.
The UQ Alumni Book Fair is made possible thanks to the Alumni Friends community and a band of dedicated volunteers – known as the Book Group – who lovingly sort, price and prepare thousands of books for sale.
Over the years they’ve plucked some extraordinary items from the donation shed, all generously handed over by our community. To get us excited for this year’s bargain hunting (and the biannual Rare Book Auction, where some true treasures will go under the hammer), we asked some of our long-serving Book Group volunteers to tell us about their favourite-ever find.
Family history hidden inside
Told by Marg Blaszczyk, Curator of Art, Architecture and Photography, Book Group volunteer since 2015
Sometimes it's not just about the book, but what we find hiding inside that is significant and meaningful. Books were often used as safe repositories for precious or special items such as flora, banknotes, locks of hair, love letters and often photos.
Some years ago, whilst flicking through the book, Focus on Andrew Sibley, a page depicted the noted Queensland artist in his studio. A few pages on sat an inserted vintage photograph of a gentleman in military uniform. I flipped between the images intrigued as the subjects looked identical but from a different era. My curious nature spurred me on to research the uniform in the image and confirm it was a British World War 2 Airforce uniform and therefore could not be Andrew who wasn't born until 1933. After emigrating post-war, Andrew's family had settled in Stanthorpe, Queensland. The donated biography had found is way back to the campus where it was published by UQP in 1963. I felt compelled to search for any living family.
A Melbourne gallerist that had represented Andrew, provided contact details for his son Ben living in Melbourne who confirmed the photo was his grandfather, John Percival Sibley. I was about to post both the photograph and book to him when fortuitously, two of our long-standing volunteers, Lana and Peter Hadgraft who were travelling to Melbourne kindly offered to hand deliver it. Ben had never seen the image before and was both moved and deeply appreciative of our efforts to track him down.
Books not only tell stories through their words but also in their hidden memorabilia.
Gold in the mango box
Told by Gary Lambrides, project manager, UQ Alumni Book Fair; Book Group Volunteer since 2015
Some may weep, and did, some may wonder, and I did! That non-descript mango box sitting on the floor of the UQ Alumni Book Fair Shed held one of the great finds of the last ten years.
Written in French, this book published in 1807 is full of mathematics and symbols. The author’s name Carl Fredrick Gauss resonated with me. The mathematical applications include a startling list of modern uses: Faraday cages, MRI and X-ray machines, televisions, capacitors, and global positioning systems better known as GPS. The English language uses the adjective Gaussian to the principles elucidated.
I wondered what was happening in the world at the time. I discovered it was published in Latin when the author was 21, in 1801. Napoleon was raging and Elgin was ravaging the Parthenon. Who was a consumer of a book such as this and how did it turn up in Brisbane in 2018?
Who was Shripad Babji Thakur, whose name is stamped inside the book? What was he doing in London in 1897? Who brought this book to Australia?
Where is a copy of Gauss (de Brunswick), M.CH.-FR., Poullet-Delisle, A.C.M. Recherches Arithmetiques Chez Courcier, Paris. Imprimeur-Libraire pour les Mathematiques, quai des Augustins, no 57. 1807, held?
You can find it in the Fryer Library Collection of The University of Queensland. Another copy sits comfortably in the Jefferson or Adams reading rooms in the US Library of Congress.
Never judge a book by its cover (really)
Told by Debra West, Book Group volunteer since 2015
I joined Alumni Friends bookhouse with nothing but my love of books to recommend me, but I was lucky enough to become a member of the Rare Books team with, my future friends, Anne and Jan. And so my very steep learning curve began!
I found a beautiful Bible with magnificently embossed leather binding, gilt on the spine, stunning lettering and everything I imagined a rare and valuable book would be. But apparently it was neither rare nor valuable because in the 19th and 20th centuries many families had a Bible to record important dates such as births, marriages and deaths. So while of great sentimental value to the individual family, the Bible was of limited value to others.
At the same time, there was a softcover, quarto size book, unprepossessing and very utilitarian in appearance. It was a 1910 compendium of the roads of Queensland, an early 'referdex' for those of us who remember the days before Google. It would have had a limited publishing run, a limited market and was really designed to be disposable. But it had advertisements front and back and all the roads of Queensland in one fairly narrow book. So of immense value to historians, engineers, town planners, surveyors, farmers and anyone interested in how much and how quickly Queensland has changed. And rare because there would be very few that have survived.
So for a novice, an important lesson learnt…never judge a book by it’s cover.
Glimpses into bygone eras
Told by Colin Lynam, Book Group volunteer since 2019
One day, while sorting through my UQ Book Fair travel books I came upon The Wonderful World of Science (1961 Bantam Books Ed. Shirley Moore and Judith Viorst).
The contrast was starkly bewildering, between today's pitch to the 'citizen science' or 'citizen participation' movement and this 1960s pitch. The focus of this little pocket reader was on 'wonderment'! It was like going back in time with Dr Who. Oh, the thirst and empowerment that the authors exude!
I also recently discovered a little dictionary called Authors’ and Printers’ Dictionary (by F. Howard Collins from Oxford University Press (date 1951), in its ninth impression).
The dictionary’s preface reminded me how we have taken our digital lifestyle for granted! Yes, books may have always had human authors, but they were once 'created' by printers and craft compositors. Not by Microsoft on a computer template or with AI!
F. Howard Collins reminds us: “Authors would doubtless treat a proof with more respect if they realized that type-setting is not a purely mechanical act. Words do not arrange themselves; about a quarter of the compositors’ time is spent spacing his letters, after he has picked them up and placed them in order; and a well-set page in which spacing strikes the eye as uniform is a work of art. To disturb it for a trifle is a injurious as well as costly.”
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