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

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."

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.

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.

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!"

'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