In January of this year I was fortunate enough to spend a week at the Newberry Library, thanks to the generous funding provided by the Newberry in conjunction with the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance at the University of Warwick. The first part of the week I was able to spend engaged in research at the library, where I worked through some of their seventeenth-century broadside ballad collections – which are a key source for my doctoral research on popular attitudes to sociability in the century. The collection of Bagford Ballads proved especially useful, and I was also fortunate enough to be given the opportunity to look at the Newberry’s uncatalogued ballad material. The reference librarian Jill Gage was especially helpful in this regard. The latter part of the week was taken up by attendance at the Newberry Library’s Centre for the Study of the Renaissance Annual Graduate Conference. In addition to hearing a wide range of papers, I also presented a paper on Popular Attitudes to Drinking in Seventeenth-Century England. I received some excellent questions on changes over time, and the whether drinking was a ‘public health’ concern in the way it is today. I also received a lot of positive feedback on the paper, as well as being one of only fifteen out of eighty participants invited to put my paper forward for online publication by the conference organisers. In all this was a very productive week in terms of both research and publication, and I feel extremely privileged to have had this opportunity.