Cataloguing History: Time with the Manvers Collection

This is a guest post by Andy Judson, a student volunteer studying towards a PhD in History at University of Nottingham. He recently completed a 60-day placement funded by the Midlands4Cities Doctoral Training Partership and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The placement engaged him to work with part of the extensive Manvers Collection, …

A Blessing and A Curse

The Rushall Psalter is a remarkable manuscript in many ways: it is an undoubtedly beautiful volume which has lived a long and unusual life – not to mention the fact that it is the subject of a 600 year old curse… As suggested by its name, the volume’s content is largely religious in nature, consisting …

The Cold War in the Cold Store

In the week before Christmas Manuscripts and Special Collections’ staff carried out an internal relocation of material and repackaging exercise that involved the entire section. To make this happen we decided to close the library to the public, freeing all staff to work in the library’s archival store. That week we donned warm layers and …

Mapping a Career in Conservation

This is a guest post by Kelly Grimshaw, former volunteer and University of Nottingham English graduate who approached us with an interest in a career in heritage. In the summer of 2015 I volunteered with the Manuscripts and Special Collections Department for two and a half months. I was involved in three projects: sourcing archival …

Doodles and Divinity

This is a guest post by Ashleigh Fowler, student from the School of English. Since November 2014 I have been cataloguing the Ashby de la Zouch Parish Library as one of three student volunteers chosen to work on the collection. The library is, unsurprisingly, largely theological texts with a large helping of classical Greek literature, but …

Saving the Soviet War Posters

I have recently finished working to conserve eight Russian posters; these plus many more posters can now be seen on our Windows on War online resource. The TASS posters were created during the difficult war years between 1943-45, although production ran from 1941 to 1946. They are known as TASS posters because they were produced …

Wollaton’s Virtual Antiphonal on display

Ticket holders to a special ‘Tombs and Tunes’ event at St Leonard’s Church, Wollaton on Monday, 26th November will discover more of the history of this Nottinghamshire parish church and will have an opportunity to hear about the 15th century Wollaton Antiphonal, which is on display in virtual form in the church. Dating from about …