Older than the British Library and the Vatican Library, Cambridge University Library was first mentioned by name in two wills dated March 1416 and its most valuable contents stored in a wooden chest. The library now holds nine million books, journals, maps and magazines – as well as some of the world's most iconic scientific, literary and cultural treasures.
Its priceless collections include Newton’s own annotated copy of Principia Mathematica, Darwin’s papers on evolution, 3000-year-old Chinese oracle bones, and the earliest reliable text for 20 of Shakespeare’s plays.
But is also home to a bizarre assembly of non-book curiosities, collected over centuries, including a jar of ectoplasm, a trumpet for hearing spirits and a statue of the Virgin Mary, miraculously saved from an earthquake on Martinique.
The first catalogue listing the contents of the Library was created in 1424, barely a decade after it was first identified in the wills of William Loryng and William Hunden. At that time it had 122 volumes, and by 1473 the library had grown to 330 volumes.
Since 1710, Cambridge University Library has also been entitled to one copy of each and every publication in the UK and Ireland under Legal Deposit – meaning the greatest works of more than three millennia of recorded thought sit alongside copies of Woman’s Own and the Beano on more than 100 miles of shelves. With two million of its volumes on open display, readers have the largest open-access collection in Europe immediately available to them.
To celebrate the Library’s 600th birthday, a spectacular free exhibition, Lines of Thought, will open on March 11, 2016. Featuring some of Cambridge’s most iconic and best-known treasures, it investigates through six distinct themes how both Cambridge and its collections have changed the world and will continue to do so in the digital era.
As well as the iconic Newton, Darwin and Shakespeare artefacts mentioned above, items going on display include:
Edmund Halley’s handwritten notebook/sketches of Halley’s Comet (1682)
Stephen Hawking’s draft typescript of A Brief History of Time
Darwin’s first pencil sketch of Species Theory and his Primate Tree
A second century AD fragment of Homer’s Odyssey.
The Nash Papyrus – a 2,000-year-old copy of the Ten Commandments
Codex Bezae – 5th New Testament, crucial to our understanding of The Bible.
A hand-coloured copy of Vesalius’ 1543 De fabrica – the most influential work in western medicine
A written record of the earliest known human dissection in England (1564)
A Babylonian tablet dated 2039 BCE (the oldest object in the library)
The Gutenberg Bible – the earliest substantive printed book in Western Europe (1454)
As well as Lines of Thought, 2016 will also see dozens of celebratory events including the library’s 17-storey tower being lit up as part of the e-Luminate Festival in February. Cambridge University Library is also producing a free iPad app giving readers the chance to interact with digitised copies of six of the most revolutionary texts held in its collections. The app analyses the context of the six era-defining works, including Darwin's family copy of On the origin of species, Newton's annotated copy of Principia Mathematica, and William Tyndale's translation of the New Testament into English, an undertaking which led to his execution for heresy. - See more at: http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/newton-darwin-shakespeare-and-a-jar-of-ectoplasm-cambridge-university-library-at-600#sthash.3RjWtIat.dpuf