Topic description and stories

Cambridge and Heidelberg announce major project to digitise treasured medieval manuscripts

27 Mar 2019

Centuries-old manuscripts feature the works of Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles and Euripides.

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Estimated to be worth millions on the open market, the ‘Manual of Calligraphy and Painting’ was made in 1633 by the Ten Bamboo Studio in Nanjing.

Oracle bones and unseen beauty: wonders of priceless Chinese collection now online

22 Jul 2015

A banknote from 1380 that threatens decapitation, a set of 17th-century prints so delicate they had never been opened, and 3000-year-old ‘oracle...

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Portrait of Charles Darwin

The evolution of Darwin’s Origin: Cambridge releases 12,000 papers online

24 Nov 2014

The origins of Darwin’s theory of evolution – including the pages where he first coins and commits to paper the term ‘natural selection’ – are being...

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The Soul of an Officer, a sketch from one of Siegfried Sassoon’s journals. 1916

‘A sunlit picture of hell’: Sassoon’s war diaries go online for first time

01 Aug 2014

Siegfried Sassoon’s First World War diaries – some bearing traces of mud from the Somme – are among 4,100 pages from his personal archive being made...

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Detail of Bishop Robert Grosseteste's handwriting on 10th century manuscript

From text to texting: 10th century Greek manuscript is brought into the digital age

26 Mar 2014

A tenth century Greek manuscript, one of the latest additions to the Digital Library, shows how the transmission and reinterpretation of written...

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Illuminating Cambridge worldwide

07 Mar 2014

Arts Council England grants £87,582 to create online digital archive of Fitzwilliam Museum manuscripts.

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Detail from the Book of Deer

Ten Commandments go digital

12 Dec 2012

Cambridge University Library is to release digital versions of some of the most significant religious manuscripts in the world - following on from...

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Fungi collected for the Herbarium by Charles Darwin, found stored in a sheet of newspaper from 1828

Secrets of the plant kingdom uncovered after over a century in storage

26 Sep 2012

The relocation of the Herbarium’s one million pressed and dried plants to their new home in the University’s state-of-the-art Sainsbury Laboratory is...

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Digitised versions of the title page from Newton’s own copy of Principia

Cambridge gives Newton papers to the world

12 Dec 2011

Isaac Newton’s annotated copy of his Principia Mathematica is among his notebooks and manuscripts being made available online by Cambridge University...

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Palm leaf manuscript

‘Picture This #10’ – The Perfection of Wisdom in 8,000 lines, University Library

16 Nov 2011

The Perfection of Wisdom in 8,000 lines is the oldest dated and illustrated Sanskrit manuscript known worldwide.

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Books from Darwin's personal library

Darwin’s personal library put online

23 Jun 2011

Notes and comments scribbled by Charles Darwin on the pages and margins of his own personal library have been made available online for the first...

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15th-century manuscript

A scriptorium of commonplace books

01 May 2010

A digital archive of 500-year-old 'filofaxes' offers extraordinary insight into early thought and writing practices.

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