Category: Special Collections

From Andalusia to Cambridge

Posted on 19 October 2015 by Catherine Ansorge

This year the University Library celebrates the three hundredth anniversary of the acquisition of the Royal Library; this gift from King George I brought to […]

Cambridge Digital Library, Collectors and collecting, Exhibitions, Hispanic, Library history, Manuscripts, Near and Middle Eastern, Special Collections

Skipping on Parker's Piece (MS Add. 7515)

Cambridgeshire customs on camera

Posted on 7 October 2015 by Special Collections

Guest post by Stephen Roberts. The Eastern Counties Folklore Society was established at a meeting held in Cambridge on 18 November 1932, to investigate, collect […]

Archives, Manuscripts, New on Janus, Photographs, Special Collections

His Royal Favour: the Books that Built the Library

Posted on 1 October 2015 by Emily Dourish

The University Library’s latest exhibition looks in detail at the formation and arrival in Cambridge of the Royal Library, a collection that has been at […]

Collectors and collecting, Digital Resources, Exhibitions, Library history, Manuscripts, Rare Books, Special Collections

Rupert Brooke: 100 years on

Posted on 28 September 2015 by Liam Sims

The latest exhibition to occupy the Library’s Entrance Hall cases concerns Rupert Brooke, who died a century ago this year (23 April 1915) and was […]

Cambridge Bibliographical Society, Collectors and collecting, Exhibitions, Manuscripts, Rare Books, Special Collections

‘It’s all in a day’s work’: the Royal Greenwich Observatory Audio-Visual Collection, Stories of Observatory Life

Posted on 21 September 2015 by Dr Emma Saunders

For many people the work of the astronomers at the Royal Greenwich Observatory seems like the stuff of science fiction. Observing distant stars, recording sunspots, […]

Archives, Manuscripts, New on Janus, Special Collections

‘Plots upon the stage’: Restoration drama in the University Library

Posted on 3 August 2015 by Liam Sims

In the 1980s the Library acquired two significant collections of seventeenth-century literature: the Brett-Smith collection of Restoration drama and the Verney collection of political and […]

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

Decorated paper wrappers in the University Library

Posted on 29 July 2015 by Liam Sims

There are many beautiful books in the University Library, from illuminated medieval manuscripts to illustrated private press books of the nineteenth-century. In addition to the […]

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