cambridge university library annual report 2005–2006 cambridge university library annual report 2005–2006 highlights 2 The year was a highly successful one, with a number of major initiatives that allowed the Library to improve the range of service it is able to offer its users in all disciplines. For scientists, the development of the journals co- ordination scheme started to bear fruit. Following an extensive survey of users’ needs, the scheme’s Steering Committee took out subscriptions to a number of new, urgently needed journals, funded title page from savings made by the cancellation of titles for Reuben Ramble’s which there was no demand. Participants in the map of Cambridgeshire, scheme now include the Schools of Biological produced for Sciences and Clinical Medicine, as well as a majority children in 1845. of departments in the School of Physical Sciences. From the Map Department’s Discussion took place during the year with all the collections. Schools, with a view to extending the scheme to become a University-wide one. right Grammar in rhyme The Library bought the digitised back-sets in the (London 1854). One Elsevier ScienceDirect database and this, together of the books being with the Library’s subscription to current Science re-catalogued online as part of the Direct titles, means that the scientist now has online Tower Project. access at his or her desktop to the full content, from the first issue to the most recent, of more than 2,000 journals – some seven million articles – in a range of The DSpace@Cambridge Project, which has subjects. An award of about £900,000 from the created a digital repository for the University, HEFCE Science Research Infrastructure Fund moved into a new phase as a fully-fledged (SRIF3) allowed major improvements to be made to service. The Department of Chemistry has been a the digital research infrastructure, including particularly enthusiastic user of the service, and it is increased storage capacity for DSpace@Cambridge, thanks to the input of data from that department that wireless networking from reading rooms and the Cambridge’s DSpace installation is now the largest replacement and expansion of the Library’s public in the world in terms of the number of items PC workstations. deposited. Material from a range of subject areas is A reader using the new wireless network in the Rare Books Reading Room. 3 Howe Partnership Map Room, showing the proposed refurbishment to be carried out with the help of a grant from the Wolfson Foundation. now included in the repository, including the Map Department, which will improve the Clinical School, the faculties of Economics, Law and facilities for readers using both traditional and Music, the departments of Archaeology and Social digital mapping. Anthropology, the Fitzwilliam Museum and the The Greensleeves Project, to convert the three University Library. The University Library has million printed slips in the guardbook catalogue, been a national leader in the development of an was successfully completed, and all the records can institutional repository for the digital information now be searched online via the Newton catalogue. being held by and created in the University; advice The next stage of making the Library’s collections on the establishment of such a repository has been more widely accessible was begun with the help of sought by a number of institutions, and Mr Peter a grant of $1 million from the Andrew W. Mellon Morgan, the Project Director, has spoken at many Foundation, which will allow improved catalogue meetings and conferences on several continents. records to be created for the books received by legal The purchase of the Hengrave Hall papers, with deposit in the nineteenth century which, though the help of a grant of nearly £285,000 from the regarded as of secondary importance at the time, are National Heritage Memorial Fund, secured access in now primary research material available in only a perpetuity to this important collection that had been handful of libraries in the world. on deposit in the Library since the 1950s but had been removed for sale by the owners in 2003. A long-term deposit of over 5,000 Genizah fragments, currently in private ownership, made those manuscripts accessible to the scholarly public for the first time in their history. Research work on the Genizah Dr Leonel Fernández Collection was facilitated through a grant of £475,000 Reyna, President of from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Dominican that on Darwin’s correspondence by several Republic, and the First Lady, looking at donations, including a private one of over £100,000. a selection of the As part of its support for the members of CURL Library’s maps, with (Consortium of Research Libraries in the British Anne Taylor, Head of the Map Department Isles), the Wolfson Foundation offered the Library a (left), March 2006. grant of £350,000 towards the refurbishment of the 4 The ‘Cambridge Illuminations’ exhibition, held jointly at the University Library and the Fitzwilliam Museum, was a great success, attracting about 100,000 visitors to the two venues. Dr Leonel Fernández Reyna, President of the Dominican Republic, visited the Library in March 2006 as part of his official visit to the United Kingdom. He toured the building and was shown a selection of manuscripts, rare books and maps before attending a meeting with Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Assessment and other representatives of the University. His visit was the occasion for the signing of a co-operation agreement between the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo and Cambridge University Library which will facilitate the exchange of information and expertise. Butterflies at home and Library development campaign abroad (London 1890). For the last decade or so, the Library’s development One of the books campaign has been concentrated on raising support being re-catalogued online as part of the for the building programme, approved by the Tower Project. University in 1993, which aimed to meet the space needs of readers, staff and the collections until about 2025. That programme has progressed steadily, and The Library lent 23 Darwin manuscripts to the the completion of the penultimate phase in May 2005 ‘Darwin’ exhibition at the American Museum of led to a review of priorities for Library fundraising, Natural History in New York, and this presented an particularly in the context of the University’s 800th opportunity for a private viewing of the exhibition Anniversary Campaign. One of the four strands for invited guests with a particular interest in the of that campaign is ‘Collections’. It was agreed that Darwin Correspondence Project and the Library this, rather than building needs, would also be more generally. The event was a positive one and the focus of the Library’s part in the campaign, and a number of useful contacts were made. Closer to that the funding needed to complete the last phase home, the annual dinner for benefactors and of the building would be sought elsewhere. A small supporters of the Library followed last year’s external advisory group has been established to practice of being ‘themed’. It was held in November help build a strong case for support, with a bold 2005 at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and took vision for the Library’s future that will appeal to the form of a private view of some of the Library’s potential supporters. Genizah fragments of pharmacological interest, with related plant specimens from the Royal Botanic Gardens. Talks were given by Professor Stefan Reif, Dr Ephraim Lev of Haifa University, and the Director of the Botanic Gardens, Sir Peter Crane. Library publications ◆ Cambridge University Library: a journey around the world mind (Cambridge 2005) ◆ Visible language: Dante in text & image: [catalogue of] an exhibition in Cambridge University Library, 17 January–1 July 2006 (Cambridge 2006) Guests viewing ◆ Genizah manuscripts Avihai Shivtiel and Friedrich Niessen, Arabic and and related plant Judaeo-Arabic manuscripts in the Cambridge specimens at the Genizah collections, volume 2 (Cambridge 2006) Royal Botanic ◆ Gardens, Kew, The correspondence of Charles Darwin, volume November 2005. 15: 1867 (Cambridge 2005) collections 5 squeezed. It is still possible to meet all reasonable requests from readers, but the ‘gap-filling’ and building of the collection to meet future demand is certainly suffering. The upgrade of the Voyager system in July 2005 offered the possibility of displaying catalogue records in vernacular script for a range of languages. New records for Greek, Chinese and Japanese books are being added to the Newton catalogue in both romanised and vernacular script, and older records in romanised form only are gradually being replaced, using records derived from the RLIN and OCLC databases. Special collections Letter of the With the retirement of Professor composer John Reif, as head of the division of Wilbye (c.1574–1638), Oriental Languages, the Chinese, who entered the service of the Kytson Japanese, Indian and Middle family at Hengrave Eastern departments, and the Hall in Suffolk in the Genizah Research Unit 1590s. (Hengrave Hall Papers). became part of the Special Collections division. Modern collections The Library’s manuscript holdings were The final phase of restructuring of the processing augmented by the purchase of three important departments took place over the year, with the collections: the Hengrave Papers, the archive incorporation of the Periodicals Department into of the Rampant Lions Press, and papers of the Collection Development and Description Siegfried Sassoon. division and the assimilation of a number of staff The Hengrave Hall manuscripts represent a from the Official Publications Department into treasure trove of family, household and estate papers departments of the same division. The reader service from the twelfth to the twentieth century. The aspects of both Periodicals and Official Publications collection comprises papers accumulated by various were transferred to the Reader Services division.