Dr Jill Whitelock

Head of Special Collections (Associate Director)

Directorate: Research Collections

Division: Special Collections

Email: jw330@cam.ac.uk

Dr Jill Whitelock is Head of Special Collections (Associate Director) at Cambridge University Library and has strategic responsibility for the Library’s collection of manuscripts, archives, photographs and early printed materials. The Special Collections comprise one of the world’s great collections of global documentary cultural heritage, collected over six centuries and spanning some four thousand years of recorded thought. In 2020, they were awarded Designated status as an outstanding collection by the Arts Council England based on their quality and significance, and are a unique and distinctive resource for research.

Her doctoral research focused on the medieval tale collection The Seven Sages of Rome and orientalism in Middle English literature, and her edition of the Seven Sages from a manuscript in the University Library was published for the Early English Text Society by Oxford University Press. Her research interests include Middle English literature, early English printing and the history of libraries and collecting.

Publications:

• ‘“Lock up your libraries”? Women readers at Cambridge University Library, 1855–1923’, Library & Information History, 38(1) (2022), 1–22.
• Introd. & co-ed., ‘Particles of light: the legacy of Henry Bradshaw’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, XVI(4), special issue (2019).
• 20 treasures of Cambridge University Library (Cambridge, 2019).
• ‘M. R. James and the ghosts of the old University Library’, including a transcription of a ‘Speech delivered by Dr MR James at a lunch in Pembroke College on 22 October 1934 before the giving of Honorary Degrees on the occasion of the opening of the new University Library by King George V’, Cambridge University Library Special Collections blog, 22 October 2019, https://specialcollections-blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=18923
• Introd. & ed., Curious objects: Milstein Exhibition Centre, Cambridge University Library (Cambridge, 2016).
• ‘Wicked women and wise counsellors: Historia calumnie nouercalis que Septem Sapientum inscribitur, Antwerp: Gerard Leeu, 6 November 1490, SSS.15.17’, in E. Potten & E. Dourish (eds.), Emprynted in this manere: early printed treasures from Cambridge University Library (Cambridge, 2014), pp. 116–17.
• ‘“My booke and my selfe”: Michel de Montaigne 1533–1592. An exhibition in Cambridge University Library 4 August–23 December 2008’, in Philip Ford, The Montaigne Library of Gilbert de Botton at Cambridge University Library (Cambridge, 2008).
• Visible language: Dante in text & image: an exhibition in Cambridge University Library, 17 January–1 July 2006 (Cambridge, 2006).
• The Seven Sages of Rome (Midland version): edited from Cambridge, University Library, MS Dd.1.17 (Oxford, 2005).

Professional memberships:

• Chartered Member of CILIP
• Special Libraries Association (SLA)