Keeping Pace with Sporting Developments

To mark National Sporting Heritage Day, we’re looking back at some very local sports history in the archive. Whether an avid athlete or committed couch potato, the Sports Centre on University Park campus has played a key part in the University life of many students over the decades. As well as sport, it was also a …

Going Global! A History of the University of Nottingham

Our latest exhibition at the Weston Gallery opened last week, and it’s about a subject that is very close to us. Going Global! uses the University’s archives to show how a University College with a few hundred students grew to become the world’s first truly global University. The documents and objects on display trace the …

Tri Campus Collecting: Freshers, punks, and trainspotters in the University Archives

A warm welcome to the #UoN Freshers who will be attending the Welcome Festival at University Park, Nottingham. Here you will be able to find out about all the clubs and societies that will distract you from any residual homesickness over the coming months, and help you to meet the friends you will hopefully cherish …

Tri-Campus Collecting Project: Time Capsule

Time Capsule Blogs by Sarah Colborne, Archivist (Collections), Manuscripts and Special Collections Manuscripts and Special Collections need your help to enrich the University archive collections and make them more representative! Here at Manuscripts and Special Collections we support The University of Nottingham by acquiring, preserving and developing archives, manuscripts and rare books for use in teaching, research …

Watching Lady Chatterley

It’s either surprisingly chaste or shockingly racy, but fifty-five years after being the subject of an obscenity court case, the sexual content of Lady Chatterley’s Lover is once again making the news. The BBC has commissioned a one-off 90 minute version of DH Lawrence’s 1928 novel, which will air on 6th September. The sexual relationship …

Putting the ‘camp’ into ‘campus’

It’s an urban legend that’s almost as popular as the old “the library is sinking because the architect forgot to take into account the weight of the books” myth.  Over the next couple of months, as new students arrive at universities up and down the country, there will be the annual resurgence of the rumour …

Monday Mysteries

Those of you who follow us on Twitter might get a sense of deja vu with the images in today’s post! For the last few weeks we have been posting some of the many ‘mystery’ photographs from our collections, in the hopes that someone may be able to shed light on who the people are. Often we …

Papplewick Pumping Station

This summer is the 10th anniversary of the re-opening of the only surviving working Victorian pumping station in the Midlands, Papplewick Pumping Station. In 1879, the Nottingham Waterworks Company built a reservoir near Papplewick, a small village just under 8 miles from Nottingham. Its purpose was to store water from Bestwood Waterworks to cope with …

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 …

A Fresh Crop of Records

There has been a flurry of new documents, books and digital files arriving at Manuscripts & Special Collections these last few weeks (is it possible to have a flurry of digital files?). Here are just a few of the two dozen or so new acquisitions we have taken in since the start of the year. Reaping …