Cambridge University Library is celebrating its 600th anniversary this year with a series of events, exhibitions and exciting opportunities.
Celebrations began earlier this month when Cambridge’s e-Luminate Festival let visitors see the library’s iconic 17-storey tower in a whole new light. This will be followed by Lines of Thought: Discoveries that Changed the World, the first major exhibition at the University Library (UL) for 2016 and the centrepiece of its 600th anniversary. It runs from Friday, 11 March to Friday, 30 September and is free and open to all. On show will be some of the oldest objects in the UL’s collections, including 3,000-year old Chinese oracle bones, a 2nd century CE fragment of Homer’s Odyssey and Western Europe’s earliest substantive printed book, the Gutenberg Bible.
The exhibition also highlights more recent treasures, including Charles Darwin’s first pencil sketches of species theory and his primate tree, and Stephen Hawking’s draft typescript of A Brief History of Time.
A second exhibition opening in October 2016 will feature some of the UL’s more unusual curiosities.
The University Library – which is older than both the British Library and the Vatican Library – was first mentioned by name in two wills dated 1416.
One of six legal deposit libraries in the UK, the UL has been entitled to one copy of every publication in the UK and Ireland since 1710. Today, it holds eight million books, journals, maps and magazines on shelves that stretch for more than 100 miles. Its two million volumes on open display make it the largest open-shelf collection in Europe.
Other activities will offer visitors new ways of interacting with the Library’s treasures, including events that are part of the Open Cambridge weekend, videos, curator tours, children’s workshops and Words that Changed the World – a free interactive app for iPad.
Further information about the 600th anniversary can be found on the University Library website.