Friday, May 12, 2006

Cambridge University Library

Good news for Cambridge University Library as it has just received a grant of more than haf a million pounds from the Andrew Mellon Foundation to catalogue thousands of Victorian books, pamphlets, maps, calendars, games, photo albums and trade catalogues. This amazing collection of material was originally received by the Library in its role as a copyright library, but were considered considered too populist, low-brow to be catalogued, and were just locked away unused. Hopefully this project will mark a sea-change in attitudes towards the importance of archiving books and printed material in the library world.

The Library has also received a £475, 000 grant towards the restoration and digitization of thousands of fragments of 10th-13th century Jewish, Hebrew and Arabic documents. the grant is from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council.