In this post, Jessica Andrews, a third-year Advanced Humanities (HUMN3300) student, shares her experience of a month-long mini-internship at the Fryer Memorial Library of Australian Literature at UQ's St Lucia campus.
My month in the world of the Fryer Library
As a Rare Books enthusiast and English Literature major, I was ecstatic to be offered an Internship at the University of Queensland’s Fryer Library. It’s a place I had been to before. A place where I had teared up at the medieval manuscripts placed out for one of my history electives.
After completing my month-long Internship, the Fryer has become my favourite place on the campus. A large aspect of this is the book-obsessed people who work there. They are all so passionate about what they do, with a breadth of knowledge in what seems like every subject. It feels like a world of endless information that I was lucky enough to travel to.
The Fryer isn’t just one room in Duhig Tower; it is an accumulation of rooms and respositories full of knowledge just waiting to be accessed. Throughout my internship, I was able to explore these rooms and work with some of the political ephemera included in the Fryer. Its focus on local history revealed to me the rich past of the Brisbane political world that I had heretofore been completely unaware of. I felt connected to and interested in my home city in a way I didn’t know I could be.
Projects and events that seemed to have been forgotten to time have been memorialised within the Fryer collection.
I was provided with the privilege to see the world through the eyes of Feminists from the 1970s and 1980s. All of these transient objects that contain the seeds of my place in society as a woman. I would never have known, if it wasn’t for the political ephemera I have come into contact with.
While I worked with these pieces of history, I thought of our own places in UQ’s life. The protests and flyers, the assessments we’ve done, are but fleeting moments in a larger history. And yet, thanks to the Fryer, a student just like me in 50 years might see what was important to us now.
Nevertheless, the Fryer has architecture plans and first editions of 19th-century Australian novels. My personal favourite item is what I like to call 'The Beast Book', a medieval bestiary (a visual catalogue of a wide variety of real and fantastical animals) from the 15th century. There really is something for everyone. Wherever there is an interest, the Fryer has something to offer.
About internships in the Fryer Library
Internships are a form of work-integrated learning where students experience a work-like environment for a limited time while still studying.
Fryer Library internships (usually one day a week for 13 weeks) and mini-internships (1 day a week for 5 weeks) are coursework opportunities negotiated by academics with Fryer Library staff and are offered per Semester or per year, depending on the course.
