The way services are delivered for the University Library’s Special Collections is changing.
The current Rare Books Reading Room will become a new Special Collections Reading Room for manuscripts, archives and rare printed materials on the Library’s principal (first) floor which Giles Gilbert Scott designed to be the heart of the Library. This reading room will provide in-person services for users of our Special Collections (alongside the existing Maps Reading Room).
Minor improvement works in the current Rare Books Reading Room will take place in the spring of 2026. The current estimated start date is mid January 2026.
While the works are taking place, users of Special Collections will access in-person services in the current Manuscripts Reading Room. Once the works and other preparations have been completed, services will move to the combined Special Collections Reading Room. This information will be updated with any changes to the schedule.
What you need to know about the changes – and why we’re making them:
- The most highly consulted reference materials from the current Rare Books and Manuscripts reading rooms will be available on the shelves of the new Special Collections Reading Room. Other reference materials will be available in the building to be ordered to the Special Collections Reading Room for consultation.
- The ways that people engage with our world-class Special Collections has changed and continues to change. In addition to providing a reading room space where people able to visit Cambridge can consult them in person, we also provide services to people all over the world who engage with the collections remotely through our enquiry service, the publication of materials via Cambridge Digital Library and the provision of digital images for research.
Over the past decade, while the total number of users we serve has increased significantly, the absolute number and proportion of users who access our collections in person has gone down. We regularly review our processes to ensure that we are able to support both in-person and remote users sustainably. - Delivering services from one reading room instead of two makes better use of resources – both space and staff – and creates capacity for our teams to share our collections with increasing numbers of digital users who may never set foot in the University Library. We will also implement a new model for timed delivery of requested materials to the reading room at several points during the day. Users may request material in advance (by email or online catalogues) or when they arrive in the reading room.
- This is an evidence-based change: the long-term collection of data about the number of in-person users of Special Collections both before and since the pandemic shows that the capacity of current Rare Books Reading Room is sufficient for the number of in-person Special Collections users.
- These changes are also in line with our peer organisations, such as the Weston Library at Oxford, the National Library of Scotland, Trinity College Dublin and John Rylands Library, Manchester.
- The Library has run a combined Special Collections reading room on Saturdays since 2017 and this will bring the same service to weekday readers, providing a single workspace across the whole day and removing the need for Rare Books readers to relocate for the evening as currently happens.