Cambridge University Library

Do not open until 2109

Eight hundred letters to the people of 2109 have been sealed and stored in Cambridge’s University Library as part of its 800th anniversary celebrations.

University staff and students, people from the wider Cambridge community and senior academics from around the world all took part in the "Letters To The Future" project by writing to their opposite numbers 100 years from now.

Their messages, which touch on subjects ranging from climate change and global recession to the progress of the current series of the X Factor, were sealed and stored on Thursday, November 19th in the presence of Her Majesty The Queen.

The University's Vice-Chancellor, Professor Alison Richard, added the 800th and final letter before the University's messenger service then took eight boxes by bicycle to the University Library, where they will remain unopened for a century.

Each author has also been given a certificate to pass down to future generations. In 2109, anyone in possession of a certificate will be able to take it to the Library and retrieve a message from their ancestor.

Together, the letters should provide a fascinating snapshot of life in Cambridge, and indeed the world, in 2009. The writers include leading academics, among them the heads of both Harvard and Oxford, as well as hundreds of schoolchildren.

Each message was personal and confidential, but many of those taking part were happy to discuss the broad themes they wrote about. Readers in 100 years' time will find out about topics as diverse as the war in Afghanistan, the credit crunch, iPods, or, in the case of one young correspondent, "rabbits with floppy ears".

Many of the authors reflected on just what condition the world may be in by then. "Our current targets and strategies for reducing carbon emissions are based on predictions of the likely effects on our climate by 2080," one University staff member said. "It will be interesting to see if the reader of my letter in 2109 feels that our predictions were correct and that our efforts were sufficient and urgent enough to avoid the worst effects of catastrophic global damage."

A year 7 student wrote similarly about her concerns for the environment, adding that she hoped "that there would still be some polar bears left in a hundred years' time."

Other writers told their future readers about the crazes and fashions of early 21st-century Britain. "I wrote about how we are living in a time of reality TV and celebrity," said one. "People use shows like Big Brother and X Factor as a platform for fame and fortune."

Another posed the question: "Will people in 100 years' time know about, or care about, Twitter and blogging? If not, what will have replaced it?"

In total, the 800 correspondents represent 32 different countries on six continents. They included 51 university alumni, 137 members of the University and College staff, 105 students, 82 people from other universities, 326 schoolchildren and 99 other members of the public.

Members of the 11th/9th Beaver Scout Colony from Cambridge, some of whom are as young as six, might even stand a chance of still being around when the letters are opened. If so, they may well find themselves reflecting on their childhood hobbies, what ever happened to Super Mario, and why on earth making up the names of the letters' recipients seemed like such a funny idea at the time.

Geoff Morris, Head of the 800th Anniversary Year celebrations at the University of Cambridge, said: "The Anniversary has been a unique opportunity to celebrate Cambridge's achievements to date, but it is also about looking forward to the future. The 'Letters To The Future' project will leave a wonderful and fascinating legacy to members of the University and the Cambridge community as a whole when they come to celebrate its 900th birthday in 2109."

Rose Book-Collecting Prize 2009-2010

Closing date is Tuesday 12 January 2010
£500 on offer to student book-collectors

Cambridge University Library is offering students the chance to win £500 by building their own book collections.

The Rose Book-Collecting Prize was endowed in 2006 and is believed to be the first of its kind offered by any European university. As well as the £500 prize money, the winner will be offered 10 years’ free membership of the Friends of Cambridge University Library.

The contest is open to all current undergraduate and graduate students of the University registered for a Cambridge degree. To enter, students should submit a list of their collection together with a short essay, explaining the theme and significance of the collection, by the first day of the Lent full term. Shortlisted candidates will be invited to talk about their collection to the judges.

The judges will make their decision based on the intelligence and originality of the collection, its coherence as a collection, as well as the thought, creativity and persistence demonstrated by the collector and the condition of the books. The value of the collections will not be a factor in determining the winning entry – a coherent collection of paperbacks is a perfectly valid entry. Previous shortlisted entries include ‘Collecting the Gothic’, ‘Missionary travels in the South Seas’, ‘The handwritten record: manuscripts and annotated books’, and ‘German and Austrian travel and first hand experience in Asiatic dominions of the Ottoman Empire, 1871–1918’. In 2009, the prize was won by Boris Jardine (Trinity Hall) for his collection ‘Modernism in print’. For examples of winning topics at other universities, see winning collections.

The prize will be awarded in the Easter Term. It has been funded by Professor James Marrow and Dr Emily Rose in honour of Dr Rose’s parents, Daniel and Joanna Rose.

Professor Marrow said: “By establishing a prize through the UL, we want to stress and call attention to the importance of a great central library, which is the focus of the research activities of the university, and which serves a much wider range of purposes than the college libraries.

“Book collecting brings people together and we hope that a prize administered through the UL will help collectors from different colleges in Cambridge to meet one another and enjoy the company of an enlarged group of similarly-minded individuals.”

Book collecting prizes are fairly common in North American universities. Started by Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania, in the 1920s, these contests have encouraged generations of young collectors to become booksellers, librarians, and accomplished bibliophiles.

Full details of the Rose Book-Collecting Prize and how to enter are given on the UL web page at http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/newspublishing/book-collecting.html

National Heritage Memorial Fund awards £550,000 to help save Siegfried Sassoon's archive

Today, the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) is announcing its award to Cambridge University of £550,000 towards securing the personal archive of eminent First World War soldier, poet and author, Siegfried Sassoon, for the nation.

The grant will help acquire this important collection of Sassoon’s private diaries and pocket notebooks compiled while serving on the Western Front.  The collection also includes an autograph manuscript of the seminal ‘A Soldier’s Declaration’ - the statement Sassoon wrote detailing his refusal to return to duty after being wounded.  It caused a storm in Britain during 1917 when it was read out in Parliament as Sassoon claimed that the war was being prolonged by those who had the power to end it.

Award-winning author Michael Morpurgo - whose novel ‘Private Peaceful’ includes excerpts from Sassoon’s ‘A Soldier’s Declaration’ - said: “The war Siegfried Sassoon lived through, fought in, and wrote about, was supposed to be the war to end all wars.  It wasn’t.  The reason his words echo down through the decades so powerfully is that they are sadly as relevant to today’s wars, and so to us, as they ever were to his. How right and proper then it is that Cambridge University will acquire the papers of this great poet and diarist for the nation, with the help of the National Heritage Memorial Fund.   Every generation, all of us, should read, mark, and never forget how it was, how it really is for young men when older men send them off to war. We may then learn.”

Jenny Abramsky, Chair of the NHMF said:  “This is such wonderful news.  The passing of the UK’s last surviving First World War veteran earlier this year has brought into sharp focus the sacrifice made by so many in service to the nation during both World Wars and the sacrifice still being made today.  The National Heritage Memorial Fund was founded to help safeguard our heritage as a lasting memorial to those men and women.  Sassoon’s archive – full of fascinating personal accounts of his own experiences at war - provides the perfect tribute.”

Once fundraising is complete, the archive is to be held at Cambridge University Library which already has several significant sets of Sassoon’s letters and manuscripts accessible to readers.  The Library has for many years played a leading role in conserving the records of Sassoon’s life and works and this addition will make the Library’s Sassoon collection the most significant in the world.

The University Library’s £1.25 million campaign to purchase the archive launched at Sotheby’s in June and is now tantalisingly close to success.  The campaign is being led by Max Egremont, Sassoon’s official biographer and supported by author Sebastian Faulks, the former Poet Laureate Sir Andrew Motion and military historian Richard Holmes.

Anne Jarvis, Cambridge University Librarian, said: “We are absolutely delighted with this wonderful demonstration of support from the NHMF. This is hugely encouraging news for Cambridge University Library and for all the many donors, large and small, who have given their generous support to the campaign so far. In the current economic climate, it would have been impossible to foresee a successful outcome for the campaign without a substantial grant from the NHMF. Thanks to this outstanding support, we now have a realistic hope that we can secure the Sassoon Archive for the nation. However, we still need to raise the outstanding balance of £110,000 for the purchase, and also raise additional funds for cataloguing, conservation and exhibiting the archive to make it accessible to as wide an audience as possible.”

Max Egremont said: "The generosity of the National Heritage Memorial Fund and other donors should now make it possible to save this extraordinary archive for the nation.  I was fortunate enough to be able to use the papers for my 2005 biography and to discover what a unique insight they give into Siegfried Sassoon's life and work.  The response to the appeal has been heartening in these difficult times and shows Sassoon's popularity and importance as a writer.  If the rest of the money can be raised, the papers will soon be available to the public.  It is particularly appropriate that they will be in Cambridge, Siegfried Sassoon's old university and a place that he loved."

DSpace@Cambridge unveils e-thesis depositing

The DSpace@Cambridge team is pleased to announce that from October 1st 2009 it will be possible to deposit theses in electronic form in DSpace@Cambridge, the institutional repository of the University. The theses will be disseminated online via the DSpace@Cambridge interface, allowing interested readers from all over the world to access them.

Each University faculty or department will have its own e-thesis collection where students, staff and alumni will be able to deposit their theses. The goal is to build a complete digital collection of theses from the University, ensuring continued access to this valuable material for future generations.

The deposit process is simple. The University Library is collaborating with the Board of Graduate Studies on the scheme, and all students submitting their thesis for examination will receive offers to deposit their thesis in DSpace@Cambridge. Deposits are made on a voluntary basis. Librarians from the University Library will verify that all details are correct before the thesis is made available for online access.

It will also be possible for University staff and alumni to make their theses available in DSpace@Cambridge. Further information about e-thesis deposit for current staff and alumni will be distributed to all University departments throughout the autumn. Interested parties can also contact the DSpace@Cambridge team at support@repository.cam.ac.uk

Further information about the scheme is available at:
http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/repository/theses/  

Darwin's library to be made available digitally

Scholars around the world will soon be able to see Darwin’s hand-written annotations on the books in his personal library.

Among the treasures of Cambridge University Library is Darwin’s richly annotated library. Thanks to a JISC/NEH-funded collaborative project between the Library and high-profile partners including the Natural History Museum and the American Museum of Natural History, Darwin’s marginalia - originally transcribed manually in the 1980s - will be ‘digitally married’ to the texts they annotate and made available to scholars within the international Biodiversity Heritage Library (http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/)

The project is supported by the JISC/NEH Transatlantic Digitization Collaboration grant program offered by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), a joint committee of the U.K. further and higher education funding bodies.

For further information, see
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/news/stories/2009/09/transatlanticcollaboration.aspx
 

The image shows annotations made by Darwin in his copy of Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology (5th edition, 1837), held at Cambridge University Library.

'Topping out' ceremony for new Library extension

Home to more than eight million books and periodicals, one million maps, and many thousands of manuscripts, issues of space are a recurring theme at Cambridge University Library.

But the latest phase of work to increase storage capacity at the iconic Giles Gilbert Scott building - which celebrates its 75th anniversary this year - is nearing completion.

The traditional University 'topping out' ceremony was performed yesterday in front of guests invited by contractor RG Carter of Cambridge. Professor Steve Young, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Planning and Resources (pictured) did the honours.

Once completed, the phase six extension will provide a further 30km of storage. The project comprises five floors and has been designed and built to match the philosophy of Giles Gilbert Scott's original design. All the bricks and roof tiles were hand-made to correlate with the original vision of Scott.

John Ford, Director and General Manager of R G Carter Cambridge Limited, said: "Once again, we are delighted to be celebrating our continued relationship with the University of Cambridge and the University Library, by 'topping out' the phase six extension to this historic building and icon of the Cambridge landscape.

"For the past 13 years, a spirit of collaborative working and teamwork has developed between our client, the professional teams involved and ourselves, resulting in a series of excellent projects being delivered on programme and to the highest quality - something that we and all concerned can be extremely proud of."

University Librarian Anne Jarvis said: "Along with the new shelving capacity and correct environmental conditions to store our expanding print collections, Phase 6 will ensure that we can continue to provide access to all our physical holdings in this building.

"In addition it will enable the UL to release what is currently a closed access bookstack floor on the 4th floor into a fully refurbished open stack with new group study spaces. One of the special features of this Library is the 80km of open stack where readers can browse at their leisure. We are delighted to be able to provide this enhancement and indeed to reclaim the reader spaces which in recent times have been overflowing with books."

Work on the project began in October 2008 and is expected to be completed by August 2010.

As part of planning requirements, one per cent of the cost of the building work, had to be spent on public art.

That commitment, thanks to a generous donation from the Arcadia Fund, was realised last week with the launch of Cambridge University Library's new public artwork 'Ex Libris'.

Fourteen bronze sculptures, in the shape of stacks of books, have been placed outside the entrance of the University Library. The sculptures were designed by Cambridge artist Harry Gray.

Cambridge University Library extends its welcome

A stunning new work of public art has been unveiled on Friday, 4 September.

Anne Jarvis and Harry Gray

Funded by a generous donation from the Arcadia Fund, fourteen bronze sculptures, fittingly in the form of stacks of books, have been installed outside the iconic building.

With three different designs, including four central columns of books that move independently to reveal the title of the artwork, 'Ex Libris' (reminiscent of book plates meaning 'from the library of'), the sculptures will be visible 24 hours a day.

University Librarian Anne Jarvis hopes the sculptures will encourage members of the University and visitors alike to see the building in a whole new light.

She said: "We wanted to bring the Library out beyond its walls and create a welcoming space by expanding the entrance beyond the front steps.

"It's particularly fitting, as we are about to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the opening of the imposing Giles Gilbert Scott building in October this year."

The artworks are the creation of local sculptor Harry Gray, pictured, whose design reflects some of the Library's associations and architectural features.

He said: "We want people to come and touch the books. Each book on the four central columns moves and rotates independently of all the others - and you have to move the books to discover the title of the artwork.

"In that way they're a metaphor for the Library itself; you can't just look at the books, you have to use them to gain understanding, to get the bigger picture.

"I'm thrilled by the way they've turned out. Almost by accident the finish on the bronzes has a leathery look, which makes them look like the real thing. The bronze will age, and like real books they'll get older and change in appearance. I'm really excited by it and it's been a fantastic project to work on."

Work on the design first started a year ago with the finished sculptures - cast at the FSE Foundry in Braintree - put into place over a two-week period at the end of August. The artist's ten-year-old daughter Georgia, who has a passion for reading and creative writing, spent some of her holidays assisting her father by putting the finishing touches on the bronze books.
Gray's enthusiasm for the project also drew a number of library staff (including the University Librarian) to his workshop for hands-on polishing of the sculptures.

He added: "Quite deliberately, there are no titles or authors on any of the books. We wanted it to represent all books rather than named ones - and not be constrained to a title or author. If we'd tried to name them, it could have been a minefield, we might never have decided on which ones to have!"

Books of enduring scholarly value

The University Library and Cambridge University Press have recently embarked on a joint business venture. Over the next three years, CUP’s ‘Cambridge Library Collection’ will digitise important works from the Library’s holdings, with writings by Charles Darwin and his circle, studies on Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Handel and Wagner. The selected out-of-print and out-of-copyright books span the ‘long nineteenth century’ from the late 1780s to the early 1900s, including works of the greatest nineteenth-century mathematicians, and a range of books on Cambridge from the serious to the scandalous. The titles have been selected by academic experts as monographs that are still used by scholars or recommended to students.

'Cambridge Library Collection’ was officially launched by CUP on 29 July 2009 with an initial 475 titles. The books, which have been digitised to ‘good as new’ standards, are now available for purchase worldwide using the latest ‘print-on-demand’ technology. Each paperback has received a new cover design and includes information about its relevance to today’s reader.

For more information, please visit the Cambridge University Press website at www.cambridge.org/clc

Rose Book-Collecting Prize winner 2008-2009

Boris Jardine was presented with his prize by the chairman of the adjudicators, Dr Gordon Johnson

Boris Jardine, of Trinity Hall, has won this year's Rose Book-Collecting Prize for his collection Modernism in print. Boris, who is studying for a PhD in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, is the third winner of the student book-collecting prize endowed in 2006 by Professor James H. Marrow and Dr Emily Rose in honour of Dr Rose's parents, Daniel and Joanna Rose.

Boris's impressive collection covers modernism in all its forms, from the arts in the Machine Age, to constructivism, socialism and Left Science in London and Cambridge, and Mass Observation. Architecture and design feature prominently, including a copy of Nikolaus Pevsner's Pioneers of modern design (1936). Books of Cambridge poetry from the last sixty years are also represented, from Cambridge writing: an undergraduate magazine (Easter term, 1948).

The Rose Book-Collecting prize aims to encourage students to build their own collection of books on a particular theme, by a single author, from a certain period or with specific bibliographical features. One of the fundamental messages of this competition is that collections are not judged on material value - a coherent collection of paperbacks is a perfectly valid entry, and Boris's collection featured a number of Pelican and Penguin Specials from the 1930s and 40s.

Boris wins a prize of £500 and 10 years' membership of the Friends of the University Library.

Cambridge appoints first female University Librarian

Mrs Anne Jarvis (Murray) has been appointed University Librarian at Cambridge University Library – the first female to hold the post in its 650 year history.

Currently Deputy Librarian, Anne, will replace Peter Fox, who steps down after fifteen years in charge.

More details...