Cambridge University Library Special Collections

Queering the UL

Posted on 5 February 2019 by Liam Sims

February is LGBT History Month, an annual event promoting equality and diversity by increasing the visibility of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and raising […]

Exhibitions, Japanese, Rare Books, Recent acquisitions, Special Collections

Watercolours of 19th-century Australia, Canada, Gibraltar, Mauritius and the Channel Islands

Posted on 5 February 2019 by John C.

The Royal Commonwealth Society department has published a detailed on-line catalogue for one of its largest and most historically significant art collections, RCMS 40. It […]

Cambridge Digital Library, Illustration, Royal Commonwealth Society

Scrapbooking in Cork

Posted on 1 February 2019 by William Hale

The Library has recently acquired two large folio scrapbooks of 436 and 360 pages, compiled between 1818 and 1822 by one E. Madder of Cork. […]

Acquisitions, Irish, Rare Books

The school years of Dame Muriel Spark

Posted on 18 January 2019 by Special Collections

This post is by Agnieszka Drabek-Prime, Rare Books Superintendent, who is cataloguing a varied collection of school magazines recently acquired by the Library. When you […]

Acquisitions, Poetry, Rare Books, Special Collections

“We had a lovely time of it and did good work” – Captain E. D. Ridley and the Battle of Loos

Posted on 15 January 2019 by Frank

26.9.15 – Dear Mother, The great battle began yesterday and we are now full of wild rumours. On the 25th of September 1915 the Loos-Artois […]

Archives, Uncategorized

Despised, Adored and Often Ignored: school poetry anthologies and the trace of classrooms past

Posted on 7 January 2019 by Liam Sims

This post is by Julie Blake, a PhD student in the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, currently finishing her thesis on the nature of […]

Collectors and collecting, Events, Poetry, Rare Books, Rose Book-Collecting Prize, Special Collections

‘A degree of a different character’: 100 years of the Cambridge PhD

Posted on 4 January 2019 by Sally Kent

On 16 May 1919, a specially established syndicate presented a series of revised regulations governing the admission and courses of study of research students and […]

Archives, Cambridge University Archives, Cambridge University history, Theses

“I have just set a Hungarian rabbi at work…

Posted on 8 December 2018 by Catherine Ansorge

…upon our Hebrew manuscripts” said Henry Bradshaw in June 1865. Bradshaw was Head of the manuscript collections in the University Library and was keen to […]

Collectors and collecting, Hebrew, Library history, Manuscripts, Near and Middle Eastern, Special Collections

Bookbinding Structures of the Eastern Mediterranean

Posted on 6 December 2018 by CUL Conservation

by Shaun Thompson (click on images to enlarge them) I have recently returned from a fantastic professional development opportunity which was made possible by […]

Cambridge Digital Library, Collection Care, Conservation, Digitisation, Friends of Cambridge University Library, Manuscripts, Near and Middle Eastern, Special Collections