The Collections and Academic Liaison department (CAL) is responsible for the development of the Library’s English- and European-language book collections from around the world and for the University’s ebook collection. The department contains the English accessions team, the ebooks@cambridge administrators, and the European language teams. We actively select and acquire material in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Ukrainian, Polish, Russian, Catalan, and modern Greek. We occasionally acquire books in other languages. This 2020 blog post provides an insight into the geographical spread of our acquisition activities.
CAL staff buy physical and electronic books to support current and emerging research interests, liaising closely with academics and graduate students, and to build on the Library’s existing strengths. The ebooks@cambridge team work with faculty and college librarians to support teaching and learning needs across the University. Since Michaelmas 2017, CAL has produced occasional newsletters about our collecting activities. Here are links to the newsletters for: Michaelmas 2017, Lent 2018, Easter 2018, Michaelmas 2018, Lent 2019, Easter 2019, Michaelmas 2019, Michaelmas 2021, August 2022, and July 2023 (latest).
CAL is also the main point of contact for modern donated collections. We catalogue bought and donated material in European languages and also catalogue the English element of donated collections. The main email address to use for donations is donations@lib.cam.ac.uk.
The department maintains two blogs (ebooks@cambridge and European languages across borders). More about the Library’s European-language collections can be found through the following links: