Mind the Gaps

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

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 …

You May Now Turn Over Your Papers

Term begins this week and many students will be plunged straight into exams. We’ve had a look through the University Archives to find out what the students of yesteryear faced when they turned over their papers. Music, 1939 Prior to 1948, University College Nottingham had no power to confer degrees. All qualifications (and therefore, examinations) were …

Happy birthday KMC!

Happy 10th birthday to us! Ten years ago today, the Reading Room at The University of Nottingham’s then-newest campus at King’s Meadow welcomed its first visitors. The Basement     Since 1973, Manuscripts & Special Collections had been based in the lower level of Hallward Library on University Park Campus. The lack of space had been a …

The Unloved Chimney

In the Feb 1st 1968 issue of University of Nottingham student newspaper Gongster there appeared a riddle.  “What am I?” it teased.  Even more excitingly, it suggested that if you were to aid this forgetful soul in establishing its identity then “a reward may well be given”. The riddles’ clues were, for the most part, …

Going Global! A History of the University of Nottingham

Our latest exhibition at the Weston Gallery opened last week, and it’s about a subject that is very close to us. Going Global! uses the University’s archives to show how a University College with a few hundred students grew to become the world’s first truly global University. The documents and objects on display trace the …

Tri-Campus Collecting Project: Time Capsule

Time Capsule Blogs by Sarah Colborne, Archivist (Collections), Manuscripts and Special Collections Manuscripts and Special Collections need your help to enrich the University archive collections and make them more representative! Here at Manuscripts and Special Collections we support The University of Nottingham by acquiring, preserving and developing archives, manuscripts and rare books for use in teaching, research …

Monday Mysteries

Those of you who follow us on Twitter might get a sense of deja vu with the images in today’s post! For the last few weeks we have been posting some of the many ‘mystery’ photographs from our collections, in the hopes that someone may be able to shed light on who the people are. Often we …

Happy birthday to George Green Library!

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 …