Cambridge Digital Library
The Cambridge Digital Library is a project being worked on by The Cambridge University Library to make the Library's collection available over The Internet. The initiative is made possible by a gift of £1.5 million GBP from Dr. Leonard Polonsky. The gift will allow The Library to develop its technical infrastructure. The first phase of work, called the Foundations Project, will run from the middle of 2010, to early 2014. Most of the content that will become available in this phase is on Faith, and Science. [1]
Collections
The content available will be on the subject of Faith and Science in the first phase.
Faith Collection
The Faith Collection will have works from many different Religious beliefs; Judaism, Islam, Christianity and Buddism especially. The Library's collections include some of the earliest qur'anic fragments on parchment, a section of devotional works an mystic treatises, a unique copy of the Kitāb al-Tawhīd by al-Māturīdī, and the first known qur'anic commentary written in persian. The Librarys owns over 1000 manuscripts in Hebrew. They cover a wide range of texts, such as Bibles. commentaries, liturgy, philosophy, kabbalah, literature and legal documents. There are scrolls and fragments, however, the majority of these manuscripts are in codex form. The oldest peice that the library has in this collection is a copy of the 10 commandments written on papyrus. The Library's Christian peices include the Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis, an important New Testament manuscript, the moore Bede, and the book of Cerne. The Librarys also houses some of the earliest surviving Buddhist manuscripts. It plans to incorporate all of these into the digital library. [2]
Science Collection
The pieces that the Library plans to use in its scientific portion of the digital library focus on original scientific manuscripts. These begin with the works of Sir Isaac Newton. The Library has a large collection in the history of science. The Library also has papers from many other famous scientists including: Charles Darwin, Lord Kelvin, Adam Sedgwick, J.J. Thomson, Ernest Rutherford, James Clerk Maxwell, and Sir George Gabriel Stokes.
- ^ "Introducing the Cambridge Digital Library". Cambridge Library.
- ^ "The Foundations of Faith Collections". Cambridge Library. Retrieved 9 July 2013.