Finding your Family
June 2, 2014
Within the 4 million documents held in Manuscripts and Special Collections are the names of hundreds of thousands of people from Nottinghamshire and the broader East Midlands. Catalogues can never list every person named in documents, so one of the major challenges of family history research is finding which records may refer to your ancestors. …
All Quiet in the Weston Gallery: The First World War in the University Of Nottingham’s historic collections.
May 20, 2014
2014 is the hundred year anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War and a nationwide programme of events is planned to commemorate the conflict. As part of this, last week saw the opening of our First World War exhibition in the Lakeside Arts Centre’s Weston Gallery. The exhibition examines different perspectives on the …
Maps, Military and More at Mayfest 2014
May 14, 2014
Manuscripts & Special Collections staff were kept busy at The University of Nottingham’s annual community open day, Mayfest, on Saturday 10th. We were again fortunate that enough staff are prepared to help out for us to keep two stalls running for the whole day. This year’s theme for our Portland Building stall was maps. Two …
Rock ‘n’ Roll at the Students’ Union
April 9, 2014
Originally posted October 14th, 2011 Manuscripts and Special Collections have recently finished digitising a series of Nottingham Students’ Union posters advertising gigs and events in the 1970s. The posters were carefully preserved for posterity by alumni John Bailey (Agriculture/Horticulture 1972) and Richard Stark (Chemical Engineering 1971), who were involved in booking bands for the Students Union. …
Money in Manuscripts & Special Collections
April 7, 2014
It’s not an anniversary many of us care to celebrate, but yesterday saw the start of the new tax year, and so it seems appropriate to post about some examples of historic money that we have in our holdings. Although we come across many unusual and surprising things when processing uncatalogued documents, it’s rare that …
Throwback to The Gongster
April 3, 2014
A collection of student newspapers dating back nearly 120 years is proving to be a rich resource for researchers and staff at The University of Nottingham. Manuscripts and Special Collections has almost a complete run of the University’s student magazine, The Gongster, from its inception in 1939 to its closure in 1978. It was originally created as …
Marketing the ‘dear little things’
March 24, 2014
When cataloguing the records of the Wholesale Textile Association the other day, I came across a thought-provoking article in the trade magazine the ‘Textile Distributor’ from 1935. It offers advice to advertisers concerning the marketing of children’s wear and flags up what it considers to be a growth market: “Fashion counts enormously in presenting any …
A Family Reunion
March 10, 2014
This is a guest post by Library Assistant Nicholas Blake. I never expected to discover that my new place of work was home to an archive collection of my family’s documents dating back hundreds of years. It was only after I’d been interviewed for my library assistant post here at the University of Nottingham’s Manuscripts …
Rain, Records and Research
February 17, 2014
January has been declared the ‘wettest month since records began‘ in parts of Britain by the Met Office, with many towns in Wales, the South West and Home Counties flooded and facing yet more storms. Several thousand miles away, the USA shivered as the Polar Vortex brought temperatures as low as -26C, and at least nine states recorded …
From Manuscripts and Special Collections, with Love
February 14, 2014
Nobody who has stepped into a supermarket or watched TV this past week can have failed to notice that today, Friday, is Valentine’s Day. Although the day has been associated with love since about the 14th century, sending Valentine’s cards and poems has only been commonplace amongst the general public for the last 200 years. Many …
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