Current exhibition in the de Beer Gallery

By Special Collections | Posted: Thursday Aug 06, 2026

SetTXTS: the not-so-secret reading habits of Uni students, 8 May–28 August 2026

For previous generations, it was unavoidable – you needed to read books to get a degree. Set TXTS begins here and explores the not-so-secret reading habits of Uni students, past and present. You could think of the exhibition as a bookshelf full of textbooks that have been ‘foisted’ onto Otago undergrads since 1869. But it doesn’t stop at official reading lists printed in the annual Uni calendar; this bookshelf also holds alternative publications produced by students that were guidebooks to life beyond lecture theatres, labs and libraries.

And after exploring these texts and the exhibition’s perspective on required reading, we hope that visitors leave wondering whether an 1841 definition of a ‘true’ Uni as ‘a collection of books’ is meaningful in 2026.

Nau mai, haere mai. All welcome.