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.

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‘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.

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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.

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‘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.

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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.

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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.

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An exhibition commemorating the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Paris, showing books published, mainly in France, after the liberation of Paris and before the end of 1946, on the subjects of the Second World War, the German occupation of France, and the eventual liberation by the Allies.

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A virtual exhibition marking 500 years since the birth of the ground-breaking anatomist Andreas Vesalius, including images from Cambridge University Library’s unique hand-coloured copy of his Epitome of the seven books on the fabric of the human body.

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An exhibition by Julien Domercq, winner of the inaugural Cambridge University Library/History of Art Student Curatorial Competition, tracing the development of the print iconography of the death of Captain Cook.

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On D-Day, 6 June 1944, David Holbrook landed in Normandy as a twenty-one year old tank commander. His 1966 novel Flesh wounds recounted his experiences. This exhibition draws on Holbrook’s literary archive, held in the University Library, to mark the 70th anniversary of the invasion.

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