Bloody Flux and the King’s Evil

This is a guest post by Jayne Muir, who volunteered at Manuscripts and Special Collections between April and September 2023, cataloguing medicinal herbs and their uses in remedies from material held in our collections.  The byways, meadows and cottage gardens of Britain were once a vast larder of ingredients from which oils, ointments, tinctures, pills, …

The Ballad of the Cherry Tree

This is a guest post by Trish Kerrison, who volunteered at Manuscripts and Special Collections between April and September 2023, cataloguing medicinal herbs and their uses in remedies from material held in our collections.  In Mrs Willoughby’s Housekeeping Book of 1737 (MS 87/4), to which Mother Bird is a frequent contributor, there is a receipt …

Cataloguing History: Time with the Manvers Collection

This is a guest post by Andy Judson, a student volunteer studying towards a PhD in History at University of Nottingham. He recently completed a 60-day placement funded by the Midlands4Cities Doctoral Training Partership and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The placement engaged him to work with part of the extensive Manvers Collection, …

Marginalia in a Medical Manuscript

This is a guest post by Tabitha Gresty, who volunteered at Manuscripts and Special Collections between April and September 2023, cataloguing medicinal herbs and their uses in remedies from material held here at Manuscripts and Special Collections. Since working on the Early Modern Recipes Research project, I have been constantly amazed by the breadth of …

Working with the Feminist Publications Collection

This is a guest post by Amelia Andrews, a University of Nottingham student, who recently completed a Summer Research Placement at Manuscripts and Special Collections Hundreds of magazines, newspapers and newsletters from the late 20th century Women’s Liberation Movement have been donated to University of Nottingham Manuscripts and Special Collections department. Ahead of the upcoming …

Working with the Coventry Patmore Collection

This is a guest blog by School of English Placement student Louise Roberts, who in 2023 worked on cataloguing additional papers of Coventry Patmore (1823-1896) When learning about Victorian literature, there is no doubt that Coventry Patmore’s poem The Angel of the House will be mentioned as one of the most influential pieces of literature …

The History of the Historian of Science

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 …

Remote volunteering: tackling transcriptions

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

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 …

From Reader to Volunteer: an exciting, satisfying, and inspiring experience

This is a guest post written by former UoN MA English Literature student, and now University of Birmingham PhD student, Buxi Duan. Hi, my name is Buxi Duan. Since this June, I’ve been working as a volunteer at UoN’s Manuscripts and Special Collections, cataloguing thirteen boxes of materials related to (one of) the most famous …