A Trip Down Memory Lane
August 8, 2017
Have you ever been asked what period in time you would want to live in if you could time-travel? Ever answered with the Victorian period? If yes, then great you’ll like this blog. If not, then still read on because my blog is also about my placement at Manuscripts and Special Collections as a Cataloguing …
1977-2017: 40 years of the Queen’s Medical Centre
July 28, 2017
On 28th July 1977, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II opened The Queen’s Medical Centre, the first specifically-built teaching hospital in the UK. This marked her Silver Jubilee. Manuscripts and Special Collections holds a number of the hospital’s papers and photographs, including those relating to the opening event, which were acquired in October 2012. The University …
Ken Loach, Ken Coates and the European Union
July 6, 2017
In researching his 2016 British Academy award winning film ‘I, Daniel Blake’, director Ken Loach visited the St Ann’s Advice Centre in Nottingham (a community organisation offering advice on welfare benefits, employment and debt). Back in October 1966, two tutors of the University of Nottingham’s Adult Education Department, Ken Coates and Bill Silburn, had conducted …
Volunteering and all that jazz
April 20, 2017
The University Photographic Collection contains an enormous number of photographs taken by the University of Nottingham and its predecessor colleges over the past 120 years. We are gradually cataloguing them with the help of students like Sophie Pegum, who volunteered at Manuscripts & Special Collections as part of a placement from the Department of Music. …
The Sound of Lincolnshire Folk Song
November 10, 2016
The Lincolnshire Folk Song Collection was established in the early 1960s at Pilgrim College, Boston, Lincolnshire, and was transferred to Manuscripts and Special Collections in the 1990s. It has recently been given a new lease of life with the help of a student on a placement with us from the Department of Music, Lydia May. …
Discovering John Achard
September 6, 2016
This is a guest post by UoN student Megan Shore about her CLAS student placement at Manuscripts and Special Collections in March-July 2016. I did a work placement in Manuscripts and Special Collections in the last semester of my final year. I heard about the placement from the employability team in the School of Cultures …
The life and times of a Victorian gentleman in Nottingham
March 7, 2016
This is a guest post by Matt Heald, volunteer and Document Production Assistant at Manuscripts & Special Collections. When I began my time as a volunteer with the department of Manuscripts and Special Collections in November 2013, my first task was catalogue and summarise diaries and letters of William Parsons, solicitor of Nottingham, whose entries …
A new view: changes to our Manuscripts Online Catalogue
February 17, 2016
After ten years of faithful service, our Manuscripts Online Catalogue has had a facelift. Our new CalmView website, like our old catalogue, allows users to search over 250,000 records describing our rich manuscript and archive collections. However, beyond a cosmetic refresh, the launch of CalmView has allowed us to bring thousands of records relating to …
Lifting the Lid on North Wheatley Manor
March 10, 2015
My name is Hannah and I am a Masters History student at the University of Nottingham, specialising in Medieval English history. I decided to do some voluntary archive work as I am considering a career as an archivist and so applied to Manuscripts and Special Collections. My research interests mainly involve manorial documents and so I …
The Countess, the Castle and the Captain
January 27, 2015
An interesting collection of documents has recently been catalogued and made fully available to researchers. The Bentinck family, Counts of the Holy Roman Empire, were cousins of the Dukes of Portland (see their family tree) The first Count, William Bentinck (1704-1774), inherited the Dutch lordships of Rhoon and Pendrecht. In 1733 he married Charlotte Sophie, …
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