Cambridge University Library Special Collections

#ColorOurCollections

Posted on 7 February 2017 by Emily Dourish

Looking for an outlet for your creativity, or a stress-relieving pastime with a cultural twist? This year the University Library is taking part in the […]

Cambridge Digital Library, Illustration, Manuscripts, Rare Books

Boxing Clever, Round 1: Thinking inside the box

Posted on 19 January 2017 by Gretchen Allen

From the handmade to the mass-produced, bespoke archival boxes protect books in collections, libraries, and archives across the globe. Here at the Cambridge University Library, […]

Collection Care, Conservation

‘Scandalous & libellous books’ at the University Library

Posted on 16 January 2017 by Liam Sims

As a copyright library, and the recipient over the years of many large private collections, the University Library often receives material which it might not […]

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

Queen’s Commonwealth Essay Competition: write around the world

Posted on 13 January 2017 by John C.

The RCS Library is delighted to announce that a significant recent deposit of essays from The Queen’s Commonwealth Essay Competition has been added to its […]

New on Janus, Recent acquisitions, Royal Commonwealth Society

A Dramatic Archive

Posted on 10 January 2017 by Mary Scott

Since joining the Library team as Archives Trainee, I have been lucky enough to peer through a lot of windows into the University’s past. One […]

Archives, Cambridge University Archives, Cambridge University history

A Christmas Carol in Pictures

Posted on 21 December 2016 by William Hale

Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol was first published in December 1843, with coloured engravings by John Leech. This post is based on an exhibition put […]

Christmas, Illustration

Under the Microscope – Preliminary Investigations of the Changi Archive Conservation Research Project

Posted on 14 December 2016 by Emma Nichols

You may have seen here that in May this year I was awarded a Research Bursary from the Wellcome Trust. The award means that I am […]

Archives, Conservation, Digitisation, Royal Commonwealth Society, Science

Robert Bloomfield, ‘the first of rural bards’

Posted on 12 December 2016 by John Wells

The poet Robert Bloomfield, author of The farmer’s boy, was born in Suffolk two hundred and fifty years ago, in December 1766. Of humble parentage, […]

Anniversaries, Exhibitions, Manuscripts, Poetry, Rare Books

Edward Rose and the Rose Reader

Posted on 9 December 2016 by Madelin Evans

A new addition to the Department of Manuscripts and University Archives collections, MS Add.10138 (Edward Rose: writings and family correspondence), tells the story of the […]

Curator for a Day

Posted on 5 December 2016 by Liam Sims

In November a group of thirteen students from Long Road and Hills Road Sixth Form Colleges in Cambridge spent a day being curators in the […]

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