Resources for teaching Religious Education: a teacher’s experience using State Library collections

As a secondary Religious Education teacher, currently studying a Master of Library and Information Science at Curtin University, I recently had the exciting opportunity to complete a professional placement at State Library of Queensland. During this time, I developed a Religion Resources page to support fellow Religious Education teachers across Queensland and their students, to help connect them with information and resources held at the State Library of Queensland to enhance their learning.

Starting with a search through State Library's One Search catalogue, I quickly realised that on top of having a very large and very useful range of eBooks and journal articles on pretty much every topic, State Library also collects things like old posters, liturgies, church reports, photos and scrapbooks from different church communities all around Queensland, and there are some very interesting items to be found within the collection. 

And beyond the kinds of items you might expect to find in a library, there are also other fantastic historical items that feel more like treasures. On a quest to discover some of State Library's rare treasures, I took a tour through the perfectly humidified repository with Chloe, an expert access assistant. Together, we unearthed some wonderful items, including noteworthy bibles from the 16th and 17th centuries and the Het Onze Vader - a technological wonder from the very early 1900s that is the size of a child's thumbnail. 

Starting to gain momentum, I next enlisted the support of State Library's endlessly knowledgeable research librarians through the Ask a Librarian service. Ellen, the librarian assigned to my request, soon came back with a shockingly comprehensive list of resources related to Religion that I quickly requested to view in person in the John Oxley Library on level 4. 

Feeling like a real deal researcher, I donned some cotton gloves and held even more tiny texts, beginning to see a theme developing. With the help of librarian, Theresa, I looked over more books like this small Qur’an made to be kept inside a locket, designed for soldiers to wear on a chain as they went to war. 

My favourite of all was the St Jerome, Vulgate Bible, handwritten on uterine vellum by a Dominican monk in 1240. This beautiful text sits as part of a collection of original leaves from famous books (1240 - 1923) and has intricately decorated pages of Latin scripture that have travelled from Paris to Brisbane and survived intact for more than 780 years. This very intentional bible, which was translated for the common people even though most people of the time couldn’t read, made me think about the beauty that encompasses so many religious texts and how this is so often lost when teaching 29 Year 7 students how to find Luke 10:25-37 on a Friday afternoon. 

This is why engaging with the State Library of Queensland collections was so meaningful to me. It offers so much more than just sources of information, it brings belief, history and lived experience into sharper focus. The historical bibles and devotionals in the collection, which you can hold in your hand, provide powerful glimpses into the ways people have thought about and celebrated their religion throughout history, bringing these stories to life in a very real way.

I hope that, through the Religion Resources page, other teachers and students might find ways to connect with these materials and make State Library part of their religious studies, discovering just how engaging and meaningful learning can be when it’s grounded in real objects and real stories.