One hundred years on: New types of University and new possibilities for lifelong education?
October 21, 2022
This is a guest post by Dr Iain Jones, Honorary Assistant Professor at University of Nottingham. From 27 October 2022 – 12 March 2023, Lakeside Arts is hosting an exhibition ‘Knowledge is Power: Class, Community, and Adult Education’ and a series of lunchtime talks. The University established the first Department of Adult Education in 1920 …
Holinshed’s Chronicles: Shakespeare’s textbook
October 17, 2022
In the 1540s, bookseller and printer called Reyner Wolfe had a grand ambition to write a ‘universal cosmography of the world’, an enormous work that would cover the history of every nation complete with up-to-date illustrations and maps, and, to make it more accessible, written in English. It was quickly apparent that this was well …
My experience interning for Manuscripts and Special Collections
September 27, 2022
This is a guest post by Helena, who successfully applied for a Faculty of Arts funded summer work experience placement. I’m Helena, a second-year History student at the University of Nottingham and I had the amazing experience of getting a placement and working at King’s Meadow Campus for a couple of weeks. My role was …
Around with William Parsons
September 22, 2022
This is a guest post by Dr David Beckingham, Associate Professor in Cultural and Historical Geography at the University of Nottingham and curator of the exhibition ‘Last Orders: stories of alcohol and abstinence in the East Midlands’. The task of putting together this exhibition was enabled by the cataloguing work of colleagues and volunteers at …
Thoroughly Modern Manor
August 30, 2022
At first glance the village of Laxton in north Nottinghamshire does not appear unusual. A few miles from the A1, it is surrounded by farmland and has been inhabited for at least 1000 years. It is estimated from Domesday Book that Laxton may have been home to 120 people in 1086. The population was around …
All Manor of People: everyday life in Newark Court Rolls
August 10, 2022
It’s very common to dismiss manorial documents as only relating to the lords and ladies of the manor, with very little to do with the lives of ordinary men and women. In fact the documents are often packed full of information about the daily goings-on in villages and small towns, much of which was reported …
Meet the Manorial Records!
July 26, 2022
The University of Nottingham is hosting the Manorial Document Register Conference in September, along with The National Archives, and this is the perfect opportunity to talk about one of the most useful collections that researchers find most intimidating: manorial records. Mind your Manors What does the word ‘manor’ conjure up in your imagination? Grand country …
Matt Marks archive collection: ‘The Bridge’ and how it came to be
July 21, 2022
This is a guest post by Aldea Toth, 2nd year English undergraduate at UoN who completed a student placement working on the archive of Matt Marks. When I was volunteering at the Manuscripts and Special Collections Department, I had the pleasure of archiving the works of the late Matt Marks, who was once a student …
Remote volunteering: tackling transcriptions
July 11, 2022
This is a guest post by Manuscripts and Special Collections volunteer, Emily Williams, who worked with digitised versions of analogue recordings for a remote placement devised especially for providing careers experience when we were unable to host volunteers in our reading room. Commencing in the summer of 2020, I was given the opportunity to complete …
Sealed Knot
July 1, 2022
This is a guest post by George Davis, 3rd year undergraduate at UoN. As a Third-Year History student, working on the Sealed Knot collection has been a brilliant opportunity to learn more about archiving and experience working directly with primary material. My role was to work my way through each document in the collection, create …