Conserving a magical menagerie: the conservation and rehousing of the European Manuscripts collection
Written by Victoria Stevens, ACR The existence of manuscript fragment collections represents a fascinating snapshot of cultural and political points in history, showing the changing attitude and purpose of these beautiful objects over time. Although originally bound, the manuscript textblocks became separated into individual leaves or pairs of leaves, known as bifolia, when their intended […]
‘Embellish’d With Gold’: Crafting an Online Exhibition of Premodern European Manuscripts
Blog post written and online exhibition curated by Joanna Hulin, Reading Room Assistant. The European Manuscripts Collection held at the University of Reading’s Special Collections currently amounts to 143 items in total. When planning for the digital version of ‘Embellish’d With Gold’, I had thought that choosing just 15 items from the original 29 shown […]
“Guardian angel” of the Cole Library: Dr Nellie B. Eales
Members of the Library staff came rapidly to recognise her sprightly, bright-eyed figure making its way to the Cole Library for a quiet and productive morning’s work. She had a cheerful greeting for all her friends, acquaintances and colleagues and many came to admire the astonishing vigour with which she laboured day after day to […]