Category: Special Collections

‘That noble cabinet’: the British Museum and its links with Cambridge

Posted on 31 March 2016 by Liam Sims

This week is Museum Week, which seems like an excellent occasion to look at books in the University Library with connections to our national museum […]

Collectors and collecting, Incunabula, Library history, Rare Books, Special Collections

Castles in the air: two works of Renaissance and Baroque Iberian poetry

Posted on 18 March 2016 by Sophie Defrance

Thanks to a recommendation of Dr Rodrigo Cacho, Reader in Spanish Golden Age and Colonial Studies, the Rare Books department of Cambridge University Library has […]

Collectors and collecting, Hispanic, Rare Books, Recent acquisitions, Special Collections

A Fruitful Resource : a guest post by Jonathan Spain

Posted on 16 March 2016 by Anne Taylor

The Map Department of Cambridge University Library has a collection of British estate agents’ sales particulars dating largely from the early 19th century through to the […]

Maps, Special Collections

A binding for the organist John Bull (1562/3-1628)

Posted on 12 March 2016 by Liam Sims

The virtuoso composer, musician and organ builder John Bull (who probably spent some time at the University of Cambridge) died on this day in 1628. […]

Collectors and collecting, Library history, Music, Rare Books, Special Collections

Cambridge Science Festival at the University Library

Posted on 8 March 2016 by Special Collections

Cambridge Science Festival started yesterday and over the next two weeks, the city will be even more than usually full of inventions, discoveries and experiments. […]

600th anniversary, Archives, Digital Resources, Events, Exhibitions, Historical Printing, Library history, Manuscripts, Maps, Medicine, Music, Science, Special Collections

How (and when) to visit the Fitzwilliam museum…in the 1850s.

Posted on 26 February 2016 by Sophie Defrance

Many of you will have seen that the Fitzwilliam museum turned 200 earlier this month. How would visitors born, like the museum, 200 years ago, […]

Rare Books, Special Collections

Malthus in Cambridge

Posted on 13 February 2016 by Liam Sims

On this day in 1766 – 250 years ago – was born Thomas Robert Malthus, for whom bells rang out in Cambridge yesterday. A scholar, cleric and […]

600th anniversary, Collectors and collecting, Library history, Rare Books, Special Collections

A. N. L. Munby’s Christmas ghost stories

Posted on 25 December 2015 by Liam Sims

A. N. L. ‘Tim’ Munby (1913-1974), who has featured on these pages before, has at least two connections with Christmas. Most importantly, he was born […]

Christmas, Collectors and collecting, Library history, Rare Books, Special Collections