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, …
Playing Around with Archives
January 16, 2015
Our first exhibition of the year opens today at the Weston Gallery, Lakeside Arts Centre. ‘Playing Around: Taking Theatre to Communities across the East Midlands‘ explores the history of two local theatre companies, New Perspectives Theatre and Nottingham Playhouse’s Theatre-in-Education company, Roundabout. Their extensive archives have recently been added to The University of Nottingham’s collections. This exhibition …
Christmas Closure
December 19, 2014
Manuscripts and Special Collections will be open up to and including Christmas Eve, Wednesday 24th December. We are closed from Thursday 25th December 2014, and will re-open at 9am on Monday 5th January 2015. During this period the Reading Room will not be open for visitors and we will be unable to answer enquiries. To find opening times …
Happy birthday to George Green Library!
December 18, 2014
The Science and Engineering Library is about to start looking all brand new and shiny, but in fact it is 50 years since it opened its doors to students and staff at The University of Nottingham. It opened during the summer vacation of 1964, construction having been begun two years earlier, in September 1962. The …
Our Autumn/Winter Collections
December 15, 2014
Earlier this year, we asked some of our volunteers and regular readers for suggestions about how we could improve our service. One of the most frequent requests was to publicise new acquisitions. Occasionally we will share information about large-scale projects, such as when we collected and catalogued the Water and Medical School records, but those …
Nobel prizewinner at The University of Nottingham
December 10, 2014
Today’s glittering ceremony in Oslo honours the Nobel prizewinners of 2014. Unfortunately, none of them are from our University this year, although in 2004 Nottingham alumni were awarded two Nobel awards: the Nobel Prize for Medicine was given to Sir Peter Mansfield for his pioneering work in Magnetic Resonance Imaging, and an additional Nobel Prize …
Rapping At My Chamber Door
October 31, 2014
Happy Hallowe’en! Whether or not you love all things ghostly and ghoulish, I hope you’ll enjoy this report of a poltergeist that we came across in the Nottingham Journal dated 7 March 1883: “Mysterious Affair At Worksop. Spirit Rapping Extraordinary. The town of Worksop was in uproar on Saturday, consequent on the circulation of a …
Effie, Lady Eastlake, and the evidence in the archives
October 16, 2014
Last night some of the staff from Manuscripts and Special Collections went to see the film ‘Effie Gray’, in order to compare the evidence in the archives held at the University of Nottingham with the latest interpretation of the scandal that was the annulment of the marriage of Euphemia Gray and art critic John Ruskin, and her subsequent marriage …
A Spotlight on Black History
October 13, 2014
If you ask people what archives are, the most common response (after a blank look) is generally something along the lines of boxes full of old parchment. That’s not exactly incorrect – Manuscripts & Special Collections does have an enormous number of rare books and historic documents – but it misses an important part of what we …
MRI Scanning and George Green
October 8, 2014
One of the University of Nottingham’s biggest success stories in recent years has been its association with the development of Magnetic Resonance techniques. Sir Peter Mansfield pioneered work on MRI in Nottingham in the 1970s, and invented the current method of producing an image of a slice through the inside of a human body using magnetic …
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