Remote Access and your Dissertation

Posted on 5 March, 2021 by nspeccoll

We’ve posted before about how to use Special Collections and Archives for your dissertation, and shared suggestions of collections we hold that could provide the basis for a fantastic dissertation.

Of course, this year has been a bit different, and while we hope to welcome you all back to our reading room soon, in the meantime you might be interested to know you can still access our content using our Virtual Reading Room service.

However we appreciate that you might find it easier just now to work from resources which are remotely accessible, and so we wanted to highlight the following content from our collections, all of which is available online.

In addition to the resources below, you may want to explore our main online portal for digital content, CollectionsCaptured, or our range of dedicated online resources.

If you have any questions about these resources, or using Special Collections and Archives more generally, you can get in touch with us using Library Help.

Remotely Accessible Dissertation ideas #1: Gertrude Bell Archive

Photograph of a group of riders on camels with the Pyramids in the background. — A group of attendees at the 1921 Cairo Conference on camels, including Gertrude Bell, Sir Winston Churchill and T.E. Lawrence. (GB/PERS/F/002)

Gertrude Bell was an archaeologist, explorer and diplomat in the early 20th Century. Bell initially travelled in the Middle East to support her interest in archaeology, and gained substantial knowledge of languages and Arab cultures. This led to British Intelligence asking her to support their work with her knowledge of the region and the people who lived there during the First World War. After the war, Bell continued to work in a diplomatic position, and was extremely influential in the establishment of Modern day Iraq.

Bell frequently wrote to her family at home, as well as keeping extensive diaries and taking many photographs. Copies of the photographs and transcripts of the diaries and letters are freely available on a dedicated website.

Visit the Gertrude Bell website to explore her diaries, letters and photographs.

Remotely Accessible Dissertation ideas #2: Broadsides

Poster illustrative of items in the Broadside Collection. — Poster advertising the Annual General Meeting of the North Shields and Tynemouth Association for Prosecuting Felons in 1816 (Broadsides 5/1/9)

‘Broadside’ is a term applied to cheaply printed, single sided sheets of paper. Often used to convey news or political opinions, they are a valuable insight into popular culture. Special Collections and Archives has a substantial collection of mostly 19th Century Broadsides, most of which are digitized and available to view and search online. The majority of them were produced here in the North East, and provide a fascinating insight into contemporary concerns and local events, but also how information was communicated. As well as electioneering ephemera and propaganda, the broadsides include reward notices for the capture of criminals, announcements of events, and entertainment in the form of comic and tragic songs, known as ‘Broadside Ballads’.

Visit CollectionsCaptured to search and browse our Broadsides.

Remotely Accessible Dissertation ideas #3: Jane Loraine’s Recipe Book

Handwritten page from Jane Loraine's recipe book. — A page from Jane Loraine’s Recipe Book including recipes for clotted cream and almond cream (MISC.MSS 5 pg 13)

Dating from the 1680s this manuscript (handwritten) recipe book includes recipes for food and medicinal products. The handwriting suggests multiple authors, but the majority has been attributed to Jane Loraine, a member of the Loraine family from Kirkharle, in Northumberland. The value of recipe books as sources for subjects beyond food history is still being explored, but it provides opportunities to explore subjects as diverse as gender issues (as examples of women’s writing) and empire (exploring ingredient availability).

Jane Loraine’s Recipe Book is available in full on CollectionsCaptured, but has also been adapted into a searchable digital edition which provides transcripts, contextual information and signposts wider reading.

Visit the Digital Edition to explore the recipe book in more detail.

Remotely Accessible Dissertation ideas #4: Local Illustrations

Hand drawn illustation from the Local Illustration Collection. — Illustration of the interior of Newcastle Central Station dating from the 19th Century. (ILL/11/240)

Our Local Illustration Collection brings together engravings and other illustrations from the 18th and 19th Century which depict landmarks and landscapes from the North East. They offer the opportunity to explore changes in the region during a period of vast technological change, but also how urban and rural landscapes were depicted. Insights into contemporary society can also be taken from the figures which appear in the images.

Visit Collections Captured to browse the images in this collection.

Remotely Accessible Dissertation ideas #5: Trevelyan Family Albums

Album page containing photographs of cats, a newspaper clipping and ticket for an event. — Page from one of the albums of Charles Philips Trevelyan including photographs and ephemera collated between 1904 and 1906. (CPT/PA/3 pg. 27)

The Trevelyan family were based at Wallington Hall Northumberland, now a National Trust property. The property was donated to the Trust by Sir Charles Philips Trevelyan, a Member of Parliament, Education Secretary and campaigner against Britain’s involvement in World War I. Trevelyan’s wife Mary Trevelyan (nee Bell – half-sister of Gertrude Bell), kept family photograph albums and scrapbooks from the late 19th Century until her death in 1965. They provide an insight into the life of a politically active landed family in the North East in the early 20th Century. The albums offer the opportunity to explore gender roles and childhood in the aristocracy, travel and empire (through albums depicting Charles’ ‘Grand Tour’ to North America, the Pacific Islands, Australia and New Zealand) and the activity of collecting and memorialising family life.

Many of the photograph albums can be browsed and text searched on our Page Turners platform, and cover nearly 70 years of family life.

Visit our webpages for direct links to each album on Page Turners.

Remotely Accessible Dissertation ideas #6: Bloodaxe Books Archive

Front cover of a book. — Front cover of When I Grow Up I Want To Be A List Of Further Possibilities by Chen Chen, published in 2019 by Bloodaxe Books. (BXB 811.6 CHE)

Newcastle University acquired the archive of Bloodaxe Books in 2013, an archive dating back to 1978 and the beginnings of this internationally important poetry publisher. The Poetics of the Archive offers innovative ways to explore digitised content from this archive. Through BOOKS, you can browse a library of Bloodaxe’s titles and a wealth of digitised poetry in process towards its final published form. WORDS uses the text of the digitized items to suggest links, whilst SHAPES allows you to view or interact with the shape poems make on the page. DATA takes you beyond this archive to discover where else Bloodaxe authors have been published. In the GALLERY and RESEARCH sections you will be able to link to new works that animate and respond creatively to the archive (interviews, films, photos, artwork, texts).

Visit the dedicated website to explore this resource.

Remotely Accessible Dissertation ideas #7: Courier Archive

Front page of an issue of The Courier Newspaper. — Front page of The Courier (an independent newspaper produced by Newcastle University students) published on 7th July 2014. (Courier/2014/07/07 pg. 1)

The Courier Archive is a website containing over 70 years of back issues of Newcastle University’s student paper, The Courier. All the issues are text searchable and downloadable as PDFs. They provide the opportunity to explore campus life at the University, but also to track wider social change.

Visit the Courier Archive website to explore this resource.

Page Turners – Generations

Posted on 14 August, 2017 by nspeccoll

A further three Trevelyan family albums have become available to browse and search on Page Turners. They fill the gaps between those already available, and bring the family to a great turning point in their lives.

George Lowthian, Kitty and Pauline Trevelyan in 1909

Volume Six is an album of two parts – the earlier pages having been compiled prior to Charles and Molly’s marriage. It includes photographs of Charles at Harrow in the 1880s, and early photographs of the family’s homes at Wallington and Welcombe. These early pages include the marriage of Charles’ brother Robert Calverley to Elizabeth des Amorie van der Hoeven from Holland as well as photographs of Philips Park in Prestwich.

The second half of this album is compiled by Molly, and spans 1908 to 1911. There are many pictures of their three eldest children; Pauline, George and Kitty, as well as their extended family, including Robert and Elizabeth’s only son the artist Julian Trevelyan. There are photographs of the family enjoying the countryside on the Wallington estate, and visiting family at Stocks, Sidmouth and Welcombe. There are more wedding photographs, although this time from the wedding of the family’s former nurse – Florence Lister.

Charles and other cabinet members at Downing Street at the end of the first Labour Government, November 1924

The next album in this instalment is Volume 11, which is laden with cuttings and photographs relating to the first Labour Government in 1924, in which Charles became President of the Board of Education. By the time this album was begun in 1924, Charles and Molly’s family of six children was complete, and photographs of their youngest, Geoffrey, playing with his young Richmond and Bell cousins. Further ephemera in the album relates to Molly’s work with the Women’s Institute, and local events at Cambo.

One event which features across these albums and others is the famous ‘Trevelyan Man Hunt’. This annual event saw one or more participants designated as ‘hares’, whose would spend the day evading capture by the others – the ‘hounds’. From 1898 this event took place annually, based at Seatoller – a family holiday home in the Lake District. Charles was ‘Master of the Hunt’ from 1901 to 1934. These three albums include photographs from the hunt in 1909, 1910, 1924 and 1926-28.

Group photograph of participants in the 1926 ‘Man Hunt’

The latest album of the three, Volume 13, shows a great deal of change taking place within the family between 1926 and 1928. Much of the album reflects the children’s ongoing education, including the younger children at Sidcot School, Kitty as the title role in a school performance of ‘St Joan’, and a visit to Schule Schloss Salem – an elite reformist school in Germany. There are images of two eldest children in their new homes – Pauline at Wessex College, University College Reading and George in his rooms at Trinity College, Cambridge.

The Trevelyan cousins at Cambo in September 1926

As well as their eldest children starting their life as adults, the end of this album features cuttings and photographs relating to the deaths of Charles’ parents – George Otto and Lady Caroline Trevelyan. This marks the point in the family’s life where they left Cambo House – the home they had known since their marriage 25 years before, moving into Wallington Hall, and taking on the management of a large and neglected estate.

Three Weddings and an Election – new Trevelyan albums on Page Turners

Posted on 18 July, 2017 by nspeccoll

Another instalment of digitized Trevelyan family albums is now available to view on Page Turners. A further three albums are now live, each including contextual information allowing you to learn more about the people, places and events shown in the images.

The three newly launched albums are Volume 2 (1903-04), Volume 7 (1912-16) and Volume 10 (1921-23).

In the earliest of these volumes we see the announcement of Charles Philips Trevelyan and Mary Katharine [Molly] Trevelyan’s engagement, and their first year spent as man and wife. The photographs and newspaper cuttings contained in the album give an insight into the Trevelyan wedding, while also showing other society weddings from the period. This notably includes Charles’ brother, the renowned historian George Macaulay Trevelyan’s marriage to Molly’s friend Janet Penrose Ward, daughter of author Mrs Humphry Ward; and Molly’s cousin Florence Lascelles’ engagement and marriage to British Diplomat Cecil Spring Rice. We also see Charles’ growing political career, with the Land Values Bill and the 1904 election also appearing.

The volumes from the early 1910s through to the 1920s allow us to see the Trevelyan children grow from infants through all stages of childhood, into adults. The earlier stages of Volume 7 focus on Pauline (later Dower), George Lowthian and Katharine [Kitty] Trevelyan. We see the children enjoying dressing up, playing outdoors and arts and crafts. We are later introduced to Marjorie Trevelyan (later Lady Weaver) born in 1913, whose first steps are documented, as well as the arrival of twins Florence Patricia and Hugh Patrick Trevelyan born in 1915. This is a very brief glimpse into Hugh’s short life as he passed away a month after his first birthday.

Combined with the newspaper cuttings which appear, Volume 7 shows us two sides of Charles: the politician who conscientiously objected to the First World War, and the family man who led his son’s Boy Scouts group. We also see Molly’s political and community involvement through the inclusion of invitations and cuttings.

In the final volume of the instalment, we see the close ties between the Trevelyan’s, their extended family and their community. There are photographs and prizes from the Cambo Exhibition along with various plays and concerts. Pictures of Molly’s needlework are also including – the work is still exhibited at Wallington today.

This volume also tracks the 1922 election campaign, during which Charles successfully stood as the Labour candidate for Newcastle Central, a seat he would hold until 1931. We see Ramsay MacDonald become Prime Minister and follow the early stages of the new Labour government.

By Megan Wilson