Topic description and stories

College Breweries: when drinking ale at University was safer than sipping tap water

22 Aug 2017

From a College brewery to 3D photography, there’s lots to discover behind the scenes in Cambridge libraries in Open Cambridge 2017

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From Shakespeare to Austen: King’s College celebrates the Thackeray Collection of rare books

18 Jun 2016

A generous award will allow King’s College to catalogue and conserve an important part of an outstanding collection of rare books given to the...

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Primitive art, modernism, philosophy, literature – an insight into the life of Victor Skipp

22 Nov 2013

An exhibition based on the collection of Victor Skipp, a local historian whose art hoard contained everything from 18th century Mughal miniatures to...

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Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Paris

Buildings for books: the complete story of the library

13 Nov 2013

For 20 years architectural historian Dr James Campbell waited for someone to write a definitive book about libraries. When he decided to write one...

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Books in the Murray Edwards Duse Collection

The lost library of Eleonora Duse

23 Jan 2013

How her personal library informed the phenomenal talent of the Italian actress Eleonora Duse is revealed in a newly-published book that catalogues...

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Book of Common Prayer, interleaved with 16th/17th century English servce music

Discover the secret history of books

10 Aug 2012

This year's Open Cambridge programme offers a rare chance to visit the historic Old Library at Queens' College, where the collection represents a...

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Manuscript N.24

‘Picture This #2’ – Lady Margaret's Prayer Book, St John’s College.

17 Aug 2011

In the second of a new series of short articles exploring images from around the University, we look at the 15th-century prayer book owned by Lady...

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Frontispiece to the Book of Numbers. Moses and Aaron number the people of Israel, CCCC MS 2, f. 70r.

‘Picture This #1’ – The Bury Bible, Corpus Christi College.

10 Aug 2011

In the first of a new series of short articles exploring images from around the University, we look at the 12th-century Bury Bible from the Parker...

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King James Bible title page

A masterpiece of biblical proportions

01 Feb 2011

Home to more than seven million books, Cambridge University Library is to celebrate the most influential, most bought, most read and most widely...

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Kalhu from A.H. Layard 'A Second Series of the Monuments of Nineveh' (1853)

Reading the world’s oldest libraries

01 Nov 2010

Examples of the world’s oldest science and literature – 2,500-year-old clay writing tablets – hold clues as to how ancient scholars acquired and used...

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Hours of Marie de St Pol

Magical illuminations

01 Nov 2010

Art historian Professor Paul Binski describes his ventures into the gold-embellished world of illuminated manuscripts.

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