Special Collections Exhibitions

This year sees the 350th anniversary of the founding of the Royal Society, the world’s oldest scientific institution. An exhibition at the entrance to the Brotherton Library marks this occasion, displaying books and manuscripts from Special Collections, including works by Robert Hooke and Sir Isaac Newton.

There is also an exhibition in the Special Collections foyer which uses books, broadsheets and cartoons to illustrate the development of elections, electioneering and voting in Britain over the past 300 years.

Richard High (Special Collections)

Refugee Voices: an e-resource now available

Refugee Voices is a collection of 150 filmed interviews with former refugees from Nazism now living in Britain. It was commissioned by the Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR) in 2003, and consists of more than 450 hours of filmed interviews.

All interviews have been fully transcribed enabling a researcher to be able to see an interview and then to read a transcript of the words spoken in it, or vice versa. Both films and the transcripts are time-coded, making it possible to locate specific passages with a minimum of effort. Each interview is also accompanied by still shots of photos of family members, friends, and places of importance for the interviewee, along with items or documents of special significance in the interviewee’s life. These filmed photographs, artefacts, and documents provide a rich resource.

Refugee Voices is now available in Special Collections. Please look for it in the catalogue.

Bragg Notebook

The Library has made available online the notebook in which the Braggs recorded the results of their groundbreaking experiments on the nature of X-ray spectra and the principles of crystal analysis for which they were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1915.

The website at http://www.leeds.ac.uk/library/spcoll/bragg-notebook/ makes available the notebook, a commentary written by Chris Hammond, (Institute for Materials Research at the University of Leeds) explaining the contents of the notebook and the relationship between the results noted in the notebook and the published papers of the Braggs. Photographs of the equipment of the type used by the Braggs are included within the commentary. The Library’s repository of digital images, LUDOS, has been used to store the digitised images.

The University Art Gallery Open Soon

The University Art Gallery in the Parkinson Building will be open for all to visit from 6th March (Mondays to Fridays, 10:00 to 17:00, with some Saturday openings). The Gallery's first exhibition draws solely on the University's own art collection and more pictures and sculptures from it will be on show than have ever been seen in one place before. Students and staff are always welcome, even if just for a few minutes! We have one of the best university art collections in the country, and now we have one of the best university galleries to show it in and to attract major exhibitions from elsewhere.

This is posted on behalf of Hilary Diaper, Layla Bloom, Chris Sheppard.

Leeds University Art Gallery

The opening of the Art Gallery is now scheduled for 5 March and will comprise a large exhibition all from our own collections to begin with. The New Exhibitions Officer Layla Bloom started work on 4 February.

Leeds poetry 1950-1980

The Leeds Poetry 1950-1980 website is now available online following the completion of a joint AHRC-funded project by Special Collections and the School of English. A series of web pages gives detailed information on poets and poetry at the University between 1950 and 1980, including the Gregory Fellowships, poetry publishing, literary maps and biographical sketches. The site also provides access to a multi-level catalogue, enabling the cross-searching of archives held in Special Collections relating to poets connected with the University.

Available at: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/library/spcoll/leedspoetry/