Our forty-fourth treasure, from the North Queensland Collection, is a once-influential north Queensland journal: Cummins and Campbell’s Monthly Magazine

Trisha Fielding discusses just what it is that makes this series of fragile old magazines such a treasure.

The north Queensland firm of Cummins and Campbell Ltd. was founded in 1899 as a partnership between John Cummins and Aylmer Campbell. The wine, spirits and general merchants had their head office in Flinders Street, Townsville, and by the mid-1920s the company had branch offices in Cairns, Charters Towers, Innisfail, Ingham and Bowen. Agencies were located in Ayr, Hughenden, Yungaburra and Cloncurry.

The company is perhaps best remembered for its Cummins and Campbell's Monthly Magazine, which carried the motto, ‘To Educate and Amuse’ on its masthead. After a hiatus of five years, a new series of the magazine was launched in April 1925, which proved extremely popular. An annual subscription cost three shillings, or single editi…

Open Educational Resources can be books, journal articles, sound files, video files, study plans, lesson plans, entire courses, curriculums and MOOCs that can be accessed by students for free. When lecturers assign open textbooks for a course, it means students no longer have to worry about how they are going to pay for an expensive textbook or experience delays in accessing the texts. 
Image by Markus Büsges (leomaria design) [CC BY-SA 4.0]


Benefits include: immediate access for an unlimited number of studentsno need to gain permission to share or distribute OER materialscontent can be adapted to suit student needs, teaching methods, curriculumno access codes neededno expiration datemay use without fear of contravening copyrightideal for teaching external/online subjectsinclusive and equitable - free/zero cost access for all students Want to learn more? Check out our OER guide.  This guide is a teaching resource and provides some guidance on where to find OERs and how to use them.

Our forty-third treasure, from the North Queensland Collection, is a selection of Queensland Government Tourism Publications (1900 - 1950).

Trisha Fielding discusses this treasure.

The Queensland Government Intelligence and Tourist Bureau was established in 1907. Its main activities included serving as a booking agency and producing films and brochures to promote tourism in Queensland. It heavily utilised Queensland’s mild climate and stunning scenery in its promotions.

One of the Bureau’s earliest promotional booklets – Within the Barrier: Tourists’ Guide to the North Queensland Coast – was written by Edmund James Banfield. First published by Messrs T. Willmett & Co. of Townsville in 1907, it preceded the publication in 1908 of his popular book Confessions of a Beachcomber – about his life on Dunk Island. Sometime after its formation in April 1907, the Bureau published a print run of 5,000 copies of Within the Barrier for distribution in Australia and in London.

A retired journali…

R U OK? Day is our national day of action when we remind Australians to check in on each other's mental and physical health. 2020 has been a challenging year for everyone so it is especially important for us to connect with and support those around us.
This year's theme is 'There's more to say after RU OK?'. If you feel like something’s not quite the same with someone you know, trust your gut instinct and take the time to have a conversation, listen and encourage action. That conversation could change, or even save, their life. Not sure what to say? Follow these tips on how to ask.

JCU is holding a morning tea on Thursday, 10 September from 10:00am - 11:00am on the library lawns in Cairns and in Central Plaza Building 143 in Townsville. We hope you will join us for coffee and cake. It will be a great opportunity to catch up with your colleagues and friends, have a yarn and show you care.

Alexander Street Press Ethnographic Video Online brings together 1,750 hours of documentaries, primary-source footage, and select feature films for the visual study of human culture and behaviour. 

Ethnographic Video Online, Vols. I and II: Foundational Films
A core resource for anthropology courses of all levels, this two-volume collection contains classic and contemporary ethnographies, documentaries and shorts from every continent, providing teachers with visual support to introduce and contextualize hundreds of cultural groups and practices around the world.

Ethnographic Video Online, Vol. III: Indigenous Voices Volume III is new to the collection and expands the geographic coverage of the series into Oceania, Australia and New Zealand, as well as offering indigenous perspectives and voices historically left out of traditional anthrpological study.

Our forty-second treasure comes from an avid gardener and promoter of gardening in Australia's dry tropics. From the North Queensland Collection comes the multi-edition best seller Cottage Gardening in Queensland by Henry Treloar.

Dr. Sandi Robb answers the question "why is this significant?" 

From March onwards it is “autumn” in Townsville. New pea sprouts rupture through the soil in two neat rows while cucumbers climb the trellis nearby. Ever faithful to this time of year, corn stands to attention as it extends it arms towards the sky, while tomatoes protest to the restraint of wooden garden stakes by finding new ways to ramble and spread out in any direction they find. This is my garden in the traditional working class suburb of Railway Estate. It is a utopia of production, which fulfils an unrequited requirement to feed the household in an age where mass food production undercuts seasonal eating and sparks rebellion through the slow food movement. Every night as the …

Indigenous Literacy Day is a day to highlight the value of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s first languages, as well as to raise awareness of and help reduce the Indigenous literacy gap. 
Only 36% of Indigenous Year 5 students in very remote areas are at or above national minimum reading standards, compared to 96% for non-Indigenous students in major cities (2018 NAPLAN). In addition, many remote communities don’t have many, if any, books. The Indigenous Literacy Foundation’s projects focus on encouraging early literacy and providing books to children from remote communities in their own language. 
“At ILF we understand that early literacy is the cornerstone of success in education,’ says Karen Williams, Executive Director of ILF. “We understand that encouraging early literacy requires children and their parents to have access to books and that children need to see themselves in the stories they read. They need to see that their culture is cherished and their stories are …

Our forty-first treasure is a series of artworks, the T150 Artist Portraits by Michael Marzik from the James Cook University Art Collection. Michael Marzik is an Austrian freelance photographer and Arts industry professional, born in Switzerland, and now based in Cairns. 

Professor Diana Davis answers the question "why is this significant?" 

Michael Marzik's significant photographic portraits celebrate the essence of six artists and their unique contribution to the university. His subtly contemplative photographic style and use of black and white unerringly position each artist in a sophisticated creative soliloquy. These photographs embody the working legacy of senior and important artists, each with an impressive trajectory of teaching, wide ranging arts practice and exhibitions sampled only briefly here.

Historically, when Townsville TAFE's Department of Art and Design transferred to JCU in January 1991, then Vice-Chancellor, Professor Ray Golding, enthusiastically…

An@tomedia online is a unique way to learn about the anatomy of the human body. It is a comprehensive, self-paced learning program that explores anatomy from four different perspectives. These perspectives teach you how the body is constructed (from regions and systems) and how you can deconstruct the body (with dissection and imaging techniques).

an@tomedia providesdetailed serial dissections of real human bodiescoloured overlays of individual structuresmultiple perspectives to explore anatomy and compareflexibility to choose your approach, rate, sequence and depth of learninginteractive text, labels and clinical questionsnew concepts in anatomy and relevant clinical applicationscapacity to 'build' systems, 'map' regions, 'dissect' layers and 'trace' imagesa self learning resource with a solid educational basisa simple and consistent navigation system
Anatomedia online is for anyone interested in learning anatomy and can be explored at any level of diff…

What are open educational resources (OERs) and how can they benefit JCU students? Over the next 8 weeks,  JCU Library is going to host a series of posts highlighting the benefits of OERs (especially Open Textbooks ) for JCU students, curriculum, lecturers, the University and society in general.Open Educational Resources (OERs) are educational materials that are licensed in ways that allow us to legally and freely copy, use, adapt and re-share them. OERs include courses, textbooks, assignments, tests, projects, software, audio, video and animation (Source: UNESCO and Open Education Resource Foundation). Image: Open ©opensource.com via FlickrCC BY-SA Why are OERs and zero dollar textbooks good for students at JCU?Zero dollar textbooks allow students to save money on the purchase of expensive textbooksOERs allow immediate access to textbooks without purchasing delays for students - especially for external and online students
Students have access to OER material on day 1 of class...whi…