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Special Collections

The Library's special collections are housed in the Old Library and can be consulted in the Rare Books Reading Room. For further information on the collections and arrangements for viewing them please contact the Special Collections Librarian, Kathryn McKee on 01223 339393.

 

Detail of Cain slaying Abel from an illuminated initial, St John's MS A.8, 12th cent.

Manuscripts

Descriptions of the medieval, post-medieval, and oriental manuscripts and papyrus fragments.

Detail of a woodcut of a smith making a magnet from William Gilbert's De magnete, 1600

Early Printed Books

Details of the Library's rare books to 1800, and of the progress of the Cataloguing Project.

Detail from an embroidered binding, with the initials ER either side of a Tudor rose

Provenances and bindings 

Information on the ownership marks and interesting bindings.

Detail from one of the personal papers in the Library

 Personal and Family Papers

Listings of the personal papers of College alumni.

Detail of a woman and child from a street scene photographed by Samuel Butler

Photographic Collections

Listings of photographs, negatives, and slides of College alumni, buildings and property.

Detail of the face of Shelton's Regulator

Artefacts

Listings of busts, coins, medals, furnishings, and other objects.

See also the College Archives, which contain resources describing the growth and history of the administration and finances of the College, and Janus, the union catalogue of archives held in Cambridge University and its Colleges.

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