Spooky Scary Skeletons
February 23, 2019
Guest post by Anja Rohde, Library Assistant. On Wednesday 27th January 1943 Nottingham students awoke to an unusual sight – a skeleton was suspended from the clock tower of the Trent Building. This was ‘Mrs Criker’, one of the mascots of Goldsmiths College, London, and it had been kidnapped by Nottingham students. At the start …
MRI Collections Project: Sir Peter Mansfield’s Patents and Academic Papers
February 8, 2019
One of the most interesting parts of the MRI project is cataloguing the papers of Sir Peter Mansfield which have been donated to Manuscripts and Special Collections. These relate mostly to his professional life, although there is also a small quantity of personal papers. The largest parts of the collection are published academic papers and …
Schooling in the Third Reich
January 28, 2019
This is a guest post by student placement Vanessa. Manuscripts and Special Collections is a section of the University of Nottingham Libraries located on the University’s King’s Meadow Campus. The archive holds over 3 ½ million original and unique documents in over 700 manuscript and archives collections, dating from the 12th to the 21st century, …
Censorship and Banned Books
January 17, 2019
An auction house in Derbyshire is selling a rare 19th century edition of ‘Fanny Hill – Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure’ by John Cleland, which was banned not long after its publication in 1748. It’s the story of an orphaned girl who goes to London looking for domestic work and instead ends up working …
Family Hair-looms
December 12, 2018
Does anyone care for a short story about death, documents and hair? Back in November, we tweeted this story with the theme of #HairyArchives as part of Explore Your Archives week. It proved quite popular, so we’re re-telling a version of it here for those of you who missed it. Usually, we take advantage of the …
MRI Collections Project: Shining a light on slide digitisation
November 30, 2018
Work is now well under way on our exciting Wellcome Trust funded project ‘Development of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) at the University of Nottingham’, as covered in the previous blog post. Project Archivist Zoe Ellis updates us on one of the main strands of the project: the digitisation of around 18,000 35 mm slides. These …
Cheers to Nottinghamshire’s Pubs!
November 20, 2018
It’s almost that time of year when people eat, drink and make merry. Public Houses, taverns and inns have been at the centre of English community life for hundreds of years. Their origin can be traced back to Roman Britain, when places to seek rest and refreshment were established along the network of Roman roads. …
By the pricking of my thumbs Something wicked this way comes
October 31, 2018
The Witchcraft Act of 1735 brought an end to the legal acceptance that magic and witchcraft were genuine. It became a crime to claim magical or supernatural powers, with a maximum penalty of a year’s imprisonment. Instead, witches, cunning folk and wise men were viewed as fraudsters conning the desperate and the naïve. This complete …
MRI project gets under way
October 17, 2018
This is a guest post by Zoe Ellis, MRI Project Archivist. Manuscripts and Special Collections recently started work on an exciting 12 month project entitled ‘Development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at the University of Nottingham’. This project is funded by a Wellcome Trust Research Resources award of just under £100,000. The project will catalogue, …
The Night Nottingham Castle Burned
October 9, 2018
On the evening of Monday 10 October 1831, people gathered by the banks of the River Leen to watch the spectacular sight of Nottingham Castle, ablaze, sparks flying. The scene was captured by artist Thomas Allom and engraved by R. Sands. The mounted print, 25cm by 31cm in size, shows a pair of men dancing …
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