Item focus – Page 2 – Collections

Travel Thursday – Frederick de Wit’s Atlas

Written by Fiona Melhuish, UMASCS Librarian In seventeenth-century Europe, no library would be considered complete without a pair of globes and the provision of up-to-date maps and atlases as a […]

Topsell’s Fantastic Four-Footed Beasts

Written by Louise Cowan, Trainee Liaison Librarian Edward Topsell, a Church of England clergyman, was born in Kent in 1572 and managed the parish of St Botolph in Aldersgate, London […]

Travel Thursday: Thomas Thomson in Sweden

Written by Louise Cowan, Trainee Liaison Librarian This week’s Travel Thursday takes us to Sweden with eminent scientist Thomas Thomson. As the first teacher of practical chemistry in a British […]

Delightes for Ladies

Written by Louise Cowan, Trainee Liaison Librarian Originally published in 1602, ‘Delightes for Ladies’ by Sir Hugh Plat is one of the earliest cookery and household recipe books produced in England. […]

Travel Thursday: John Todhunter Journal

Written by Louise Cowan, Trainee Liaison Librarian John Todhunter (1839-1916) is best known as a poet and literary critic, but was also a doctor of medicine, painter, composer and traveller. […]

Travel Thursday – Great Western Railway

Written by Louise Cowan, Trainee Liaison Librarian The Great Western Railway (GWR) was founded in 1833 and received an enabling Act of Parliament in August 1835 that allowed the company […]

William Wordsworth: A letter to Longman, 1820

Written by Adam Lines, Reading Room Supervisor. Before I started working at the University of Reading Special Collections, I spent a year in Grasmere working with the collections at the […]

Travel Thursday: Captain Cook and H.M.S Endeavour

Written By Louise Cowan, Trainee Liaison Librarian This month sees the anniversary of the first European ship landing in Eastern Australia. Led by British explorer, Captain James Cook, the crew of […]

Incunables identified

Written by Erika Delbecque, UMASCS Librarian Last month we wrote about the process of identifying loose leaves from incunables, books printed in Europe before 1501. We also asked for your help in identifying […]

Memoir on the Dodo

Written by Louise Cowan, Trainee Liaison Librarian One of the interesting finds from our cataloguing and reclassification of the Cole Library Collection is ‘Memoir on the Dodo’ by Sir Richard Owen, […]