Working with the Mining Collections

This is a guest post by Owen Coller, who volunteered at Manuscripts and Special Collections between October and November 2023, as part of the Nottingham Advantage Award scheme. As a humanities student, the opportunity to explore a collection of 19th and 20th century sources through the Nottingham Advantage Award was both a daunting and exciting …

Alisander’s Journey and Other Poems

This is a guest post by Gail Webb, who volunteered at Manuscripts and Special Collections between April and September 2023, cataloguing medicinal herbs and their uses in remedies from material held in our collections.  Alisander’s Journey A species named as Alexanders, known to the ancient Romans, grows green on clifftops, thrusts its way along roads, …

Bloody Flux and the King’s Evil

This is a guest post by Jayne Muir, who volunteered at Manuscripts and Special Collections between April and September 2023, cataloguing medicinal herbs and their uses in remedies from material held in our collections.  The byways, meadows and cottage gardens of Britain were once a vast larder of ingredients from which oils, ointments, tinctures, pills, …

The Ballad of the Cherry Tree

This is a guest post by Trish Kerrison, who volunteered at Manuscripts and Special Collections between April and September 2023, cataloguing medicinal herbs and their uses in remedies from material held in our collections.  In Mrs Willoughby’s Housekeeping Book of 1737 (MS 87/4), to which Mother Bird is a frequent contributor, there is a receipt …

Marginalia in a Medical Manuscript

This is a guest post by Tabitha Gresty, who volunteered at Manuscripts and Special Collections between April and September 2023, cataloguing medicinal herbs and their uses in remedies from material held here at Manuscripts and Special Collections. Since working on the Early Modern Recipes Research project, I have been constantly amazed by the breadth of …

Working with the Feminist Publications Collection

This is a guest post by Amelia Andrews, a University of Nottingham student, who recently completed a Summer Research Placement at Manuscripts and Special Collections Hundreds of magazines, newspapers and newsletters from the late 20th century Women’s Liberation Movement have been donated to University of Nottingham Manuscripts and Special Collections department. Ahead of the upcoming …

Feminist Archive East Midlands at the University of Nottingham

A team of volunteers and former members of the Nottingham Women’s Liberation Group have been working with Manuscripts and Special Collections at the University of Nottingham to create a feminist archive for the East Midlands.   The archive consists of material compiled by women involved in various strands of activism between the 1960s and 1990s, …

Unlocking the DH Lawrence Collection

This is a post by Amy, D H Lawrence Project cataloguer. After a delayed start due to Covid, work is currently underway on a two-year project aimed at making our D H Lawrence collections accessible to a wider audience. The project will incorporate a number of different elements, including the digitisation of Lawrence’s correspondence and …