Reading the correspondence of the Duchess of Portland
May 18, 2023
This is a guest blog by Arts Faculty Placement student Nabiha Iqbal, who in 2023, worked on cataloguing the papers of Dorothy Bentinck, Duchess of Portland (1750-1794). I was granted the unique opportunity to revisit the lives of the noble men and women of 18th century England through their primary means of communication: letters. Each …
The History of the Historian of Science
May 15, 2023
This is a guest post by Anna Vogt, History undergraduate. Although I am a history student, I have also always been fascinated with science, especially the ways in which the humanities and STEM subjects intersect. As such, I jumped at the opportunity to undertake a placement with Manuscripts and Special Collections working on the papers …
Plants & Prayers
April 30, 2023
Healing is what makes us human – but concepts of health and methods of healing have changed much over time. Visitors to our latest exhibition Plants and Prayers: health and healing before 1700 will see how healthcare in the past was not just the domain of the physician: priests to apothecaries to housewives all provided …
History of the James Cameron-Gifford Library, Sutton Bonington Campus.
April 23, 2023
Dr James Cameron-Gifford was a leading agriculturalist born in 1909. He first came to Nottingham in 1942 when he was appointed as Technical Officer with the Nottingham War Agricultural Committee. The object of the committee was to increase the county’s food production, and among the many tasks allotted to Cameron-Gifford was the development of a …
Documenting the pandemic and beyond: website captures for the University Archives available to view
April 17, 2023
This is a post by Laura Peaurt, Digital Preservation Officer and Sarah Colborne, Archivist (Collections). Capture and Preservation In a previous blog we discussed using Preservica, our digital preservation platform, to successfully capture websites and social media for the archive. This is known as web archiving. The tools provided by the platform allow us to …
Adult Education and Workers’ Control
February 22, 2023
This is a guest post by Tony Simpson, from the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation and Spokesman Books. The ‘Knowledge is Power’ exhibition at Weston Gallery celebrates the University of Nottingham’s Adult Education Department. In the wake of the First World War, the Ministry of Reconstruction established a special committee which, in its final report in …
The Ken Coates collection – the coal mining industry and its decline in Nottinghamshire
December 14, 2022
This is a guest blog post by Law student Ceyhan Ballioglu, who undertook a placement with Manuscripts and Special Collection in 2022. During the Autumn semester of my second year at the University of Nottingham, I had the opportunity to volunteer at the Manuscripts and Special Collections Department. Here, I was given the chance to …
Advocates for animal welfare
December 1, 2022
Work has just finished on an 18-month project to catalogue papers held by Manuscripts and Special Collections which chart the progress made in promoting the concept of the Three Rs, the guiding principles of Reduction, Replacement and Refinement, in regards to the use of animals in scientific research. The work was made possible by a …
Experiencing Adult Education at Nottingham
November 21, 2022
This is a guest post by Mark Gilman, Professor of Economics at the University of Derby. Knowledge, Power and Class are words close to my heart. As a working-class lad who left school on a Friday in June 1976 and started work on the Monday, with little formal qualification, education left me feeling as though …
Discovering the digital: Developing born digital access
November 3, 2022
This is a post by Laura Peaurt, Digital Preservation Officer. Today we celebrate World Digital Preservation Day. The theme for this year’s event is ‘Data for All, For Good, Forever’, and this event is a chance for us to reflect on our work within Manuscripts and Special Collections to collect, preserve and make accessible our …