A major gift is enabling Cambridge University to undertake a major digitization project. The library houses some of most important collections in existence, including those of Newton and Darwin. The library also holds the some of the oldest and most significant Qur’ans ever to be uncovered, as well an eighth century copy of Surat al-Anfal, as well as the world’s largest and most important collection of Jewish Genizah materials, including the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Collection – 193,000 fragments of manuscripts as significant as the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Its Christian holdings include the Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis, one of the most important Greek New Testament manuscripts, the Book of Deer and the Book of Cerne.
Cambridge University Library has been a legal deposit library since 1710 and is entitled to acquire a copy of each book and journal published in the UK and Ireland. The library currently houses eight million books and periodicals, one million maps and thousands of manuscripts over 100 miles of shelving, expanding at the rate of two miles per year.
For more information check out Resource Shelf.
