Recycling Literary Treasures
In 2023, the University of Queensland engaged more than 7,500 community members through a four-day book fair event held over a long weekend in May. People were invited to campus to buy affordable second-hand books, records, and magazines, eat at food trucks with crepes, coffee, and gelato, and participate in a Rare Book Auction that featured a first edition Winnie the Pooh and a 275-year-old cookbook.
This event, the UQ Alumni Book Fair was first held in 1979, making it the longest running book fair in Brisbane, Australia. In 2020, the book fair moved within the advancement portfolio at the university. With its team’s increased resources, the fair has expanded from a biannual event to an annual one.
The fair is designed to engage people across campus and the wider community. On Friday when campus is open, students stop by. Over the weekend, a Family Day includes activities like face painting, coloring bookmarks, and playing on the local playground, with advancement staff dressing up as fairies and princesses. Monday is a bargain day intended to clear the shelves.
“The buzz of the whole weekend really keeps you running,” says Braden Asujamaa, Alumni Engagement Coordinator.
Alumni Friends, a volunteer group of mostly retired graduates and community members consider the book fair a passion project and keep the event going year after year, says Asujamaa, who liaises between the group and the advancement team.
These ex-professors, academics, and others with special interests in literature engage in the year-long process of sorting the donated books into 400 genres and pricing them to appeal to book lovers looking for a bargain.
“[The volunteers] do it to raise money, but they also do it for their social connection—every morning they all stop for a cup of tea on the balcony [before getting to work]. It’s a beautiful social group,” says Kathryn Cowe, Manager, Alumni Engagement.
The event also engages more than 100 student volunteers to help run the sales floor and tills.
“We’ve had a lot of fun building relationships with the volunteers,” says Cowe. “Seeing the multigenerational benefit on the day [of the event] … we have 100 plus students with older volunteers all wearing their purple book fair T-shirts, 120,000 books on display—everyone’s a part of the success,” says Cowe.
In 2023, more than $212,000 was raised for student scholarships, research, and UQ educators.
Cowe credits the success and a 70% increase in the number of attendees from the year prior to a partnership that combines the skills of Alumni Friends with the advancement team’s ability to promote the fair through its communications channels.
This includes bookmark mailers, social media promotion, and more unique efforts. In 2023, a team member attempted a dumpling recipe from the 275-year-old cookbook in the Rare Book Auction, and alumni-run campus restaurant, Patina, added dishes modeled on recipes from the cookbook to its menu in the week leading up to the fair.
Books that aren’t sold over the course of the weekend are kept for resale the following year, donated to charities across Brisbane, or shared in partnership with the local prison, or schools in Papua New Guinea and Indonesia.
“We’re big on sustainability so it’s cool to give these books a second, third life … one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, and we see that throughout the weekend, so it is pretty special,” says Asujamaa.
About the author(s)
Hannah Ratzer is Editorial Specialist at CASE.
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March-April Issue of Currents
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