An interview with Nitisha, Archives Assistant
One of our volunteers,Whitney, has been interviewing MERL & Special Collections staff about their roles. Today she talks to Nitisha, a Law graduate who now works as a Conservation & Archive Assistant. Though she started out with little experience in Museums & Archives, volunteering with our Conservator gave her an opportunity to learn about that […]
Finding Items in the Cole Library
Written by Helen Westhrop, Library Assistant Next week I begin the reclassification of the Cole Library; by this I mean to give each item a place on the electronic catalogue. Until now, some of the items have been added to Enterprise, the Library catalogue, while the rest have only been accessible by the card catalogue. […]
Explore Your Archive: Woolworths
As part of the Explore Your Archive campaign, we’ve been looking at the role of archivists. Here we look at the work involved in dealing with a newly acquired collection, and preparing items for use by researchers. Woolworths was a major retailer of books, clothes and pick and mix sweets. Shoppers in the UK considered […]
Behind the scenes: getting to know readers old and new
Behind the Scenes: A Tour of Treasures!
Hello! My name is Louise Cowan and I’m a new member of staff here at UMASCS. Although my official role is ‘Trainee Liaison Librarian’ and I will mostly be based at the University Library at Whiteknights Campus, I am excited to be spending one day a week working with the Special Collections team to support […]
Behind the scenes: digitisation of East German WW2 propaganda films
Ramona Salzgeber from the Centre of Eastern German Studies is working with us at Special Collections as an intern. For research purposes she is working to digitise propaganda films from WW2 and films from the DDR from the CEGS archival collection which will later be transferred to Special Collections for storage. Working with old film material can be very […]
Rural Reads Plus review: Winter Sonata
For the month of March 2015, Rural Reads Plus read Winter Sonata by Dorothy Edwards. We have the Dorothy Edwards Collection within our Special Collections plus it also a rural read, so the book fits entirely into our remit. Winter Sonata tells the story of young Arnold Nettle, who has left the city due to […]
Rural Reads Plus review: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
To celebrate 150 years since the publication of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Rural Reads Plus chose the book for their February meeting. For many of the group it meant rereading the book and revisiting childhood memories. I always enjoy rereading childhood favourites; when we read Wind and the Willows in February 2011, there was so […]
A trip to the SS Great Britain
This post comes from David, our Graduate Trainee Library Assistant. Each year, our teams visit a few other collections to learn about how they work and what material they offer. With just three weeks under my belt, I felt very fortunate to go on the staff trip to Bristol at the end of November. Although […]
Life behind the scenes and beyond …
Today’s post comes from our Library Assistant Helen, who has a special interest in books about illustration and design and has been working on the Mark Longman Library. When I joined the library as Library Assistant 15 years ago, little did I know where it would lead me. I have remained in this post, but […]