Lines of Thought celebrates 600 years of the University Library by tracing six key concepts that have shaped the world, and uncovering the role Cambridge University Library and its collections have played in the development of those concepts over six hundred years; from 1416 back to the third millennium BCE and forward to the present day, this exhibition includes some of the most iconic treasures in the Library.

The exhibition has been extended by popular demand and will be open from 9am to 4.30pm on Saturday 1 October. It will close to the public at 1.30pm on Tuesday 27 September for a private event.

The wills of William Loring and William Hunden, both dated March 1416, are the earliest surviving references to a library specifically associated with the University. The display cases in the Entrance Hall trace the early history of the Library and begin the story of the major exhibition Lines of Thought.

The exhibition has been extended by popular demand and will be open from 9am to 4.30pm on Saturday 1 October. It will close to the public at 1.30pm on Tuesday 27 September for a private event.

Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown (1716–1783) remains one of the most influential figures in British garden history. Only a tiny minority had the estate and the money needed to realise his schemes, but the expanding publishing industry served the largest audience for his landscapes – the armchair traveller. A legion of artists served this market, recording Brown’s work in pencil, oil, watercolour and ink. This exhibition reveals some of the rich pictorial record of Brown’s landscapes.

In 1216 St Dominic settled a religious community of preachers at Saint-Romain in Toulouse. In 2016 the Order of Preachers (Dominicans) celebrates its 800th anniversary. This exhibition marks the central role that books have played in the work of the Order over eight centuries.

To view the major new virtual exhibition, click the image to the left.

The Canon of Medicine (Al-Qānūn fī al-ṭibb) of the Persian polymath Avicenna (Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī ibn Sīnā, 980–1037) was one of the most influential medical texts in both the medieval Arabo-Islamic world and in pre-modern Europe, and it is no surprise that such a pervasive treatise should be found among the 200,000 fragments of manuscripts of the Cambridge Genizah Collections. This exhibition presents a sample.

View online by clicking the image to the left.

A virtual exhibition featuring drawings relating to the nineteenth-century competition to design a new University Library, selected by Max Bryant, winner of the 2015 Cambridge University Library/History of Art Student Curatorial Competition.

View online by clicking on the image to the left.

‘His royal favour’ commemorates the 300th anniversary of the gift by George I to the University of Cambridge of 30,000 books and manuscripts that transformed the University Library for ever. It includes some of the highlights of the collection, and looks to the future of these books at the heart of University research and learning.

View online by clicking the image to the left.

‘A Damned Serious Business’ draws on the rich and varied collections of Cambridge University Library to highlight written records, maps and book arts relating to the Battle of Waterloo and the era in which it played so decisive a part.

View online by clicking on the image to the left.

A major exhibition giving insights into the ways early books were decorated, annotated, bound, used and abused by their owners in the first hundred years after the development of the printing press by Johann Gutenberg.

View online by clicking on the image to the left.

The Venetian printer Aldus Manutius produced nearly 120 editions during his twenty-year career from 1495 to 1515. This online exhibition highlights a selection of his works, which are renowned for their purity of proportion and elegance of the founts, and changed the appearance of books for ever.

View online by clicking on the image to the left.