Spooky Scary Skeletons
February 23, 2019
Guest post by Anja Rohde, Library Assistant. On Wednesday 27th January 1943 Nottingham students awoke to an unusual sight – a skeleton was suspended from the clock tower of the Trent Building. This was ‘Mrs Criker’, one of the mascots of Goldsmiths College, London, and it had been kidnapped by Nottingham students. At the start …
Schooling in the Third Reich
January 28, 2019
This is a guest post by student placement Vanessa. Manuscripts and Special Collections is a section of the University of Nottingham Libraries located on the University’s King’s Meadow Campus. The archive holds over 3 ½ million original and unique documents in over 700 manuscript and archives collections, dating from the 12th to the 21st century, …
Found: the lost archive of the Cross Country and Athletics Club
September 24, 2018
Manuscripts and Special Collections recently took in the lost archive of the University of Nottingham Cross Country and Athletics Club. Seven boxes of record books, photos and scrapbooks were bought into the MSC reading room by a former president of the Club who had saved them from destruction after discovering them hiding in the attic …
Student society archives: the SNoGS time capsule
May 22, 2018
We are continuing with our mission to collect material that reflects contemporary experiences of student life, and you may have seen us at Welcome Fairs pestering student societies to dig out the papers, photographs, posters and flyers that tend to get passed down from committee member to committee member. If you are a society officer …
Work placement with Manuscripts and Special Collections: the Stephen Lowe papers
April 25, 2018
This is a guest post by Georgia Cannon, second year undergraduate music student. As part of my Music degree, I chose to do a work placement module. I never realised there would have been an opportunity for working at Manuscripts and Special Collections, but I put it as my first choice knowing it would be …
The Life of a Communist: My placement working on the political papers of Fred Westacott
February 28, 2018
This is a guest post by second-year History and Politics student Niamh Southwell The ideas of Communism have always been a landmark moment in the study of political theory, however apart from the major leaders in these areas, often the effort of local champions for the cause are dismissed. Luckily for me, I had the chance …
Putting Creative Writing Back On The Syllabus
February 20, 2018
This is a guest post by second-year English student Bertie Beeching. “The Manuscripts and Special Collections archive,” I recalled reading to myself when scanning through placement opportunities. A small and contemptuous part of my brain made me envision a small, dark room filled with filing cabinets. You can imagine, then, how overwhelming it was to …
Mind the Gaps
September 25, 2017
The search for student publications; a blog by Nicholas Blake, Library Assistant with Manuscripts and Special Collections. It’s tempting to think that students these days rely solely on the Internet and social media to disseminate information, Whatsapping, Snapchatting and Instagramming all the important news and gossip about their University lives. Yet print still has prestige, …
Notable Nottingham Alumni: Raja Azlan Shah
September 14, 2017
As the University of Nottingham prepares to welcome thousands of students for the new academic year, we look back at some notable alumni, starting with the King of Malaysia, Azlan Shah. Azlan Shah was born on 19th April 1928 in Perak, the 4th-largest state in Malaysia. He was the second son of Sultan Yussuf Izzuddin …
Veterinary Verse: The life and rhymes of Connie Ford
June 26, 2017
With a rich history of rebellion, Nottingham has spawned many world-class writers over the past few hundred years – from Byron to D.H. Lawrence and to Alan Sillitoe. However, the archives of Manuscripts and Special Collections hold the collection of one more rebel writer who can be added to Nottingham’s illustrious literary history: Connie Mae …
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