走進(jìn)劍橋大學(xué) 第37期:劍橋圖書館

Cambridge University Library is one of the oldest institutions in the University of Cambridge, and for more than 600 years it has been central to the support of teaching and research at Cambridge, and a major resource for scholars around the world. It is one of the world's most important research Libraries.

劍橋圖書館是劍橋大學(xué)歷史上最為悠久的機(jī)構(gòu)之一，在長達(dá)600年的時間里，它都是劍橋大學(xué)教學(xué)和科研的核心，是世界各地的學(xué)者們求知的寶地。同時，它也是世界上最重要的科研圖書館之一。

Though the library enjoys a history of more than 600 years, in the early days, most of the collections mainly depended on donations and legacies. The library began to purchase books only in 1617, and it began its claim on books provided by publishers since 1662. In 1709，the King promulgated the Copyright Act which announced that all the books published in the country should turn in a copy to the Cambridge University Library, and the amount of the collections soared.

盡管有著600余年的歷史，其早期的館藏幾乎完全靠捐贈或遺贈。圖書館從1617年開始采購圖書，1662年開始收藏出版商呈繳的樣本。1709年英國頒布版權(quán)法，正式規(guī)定凡本國出版的圖書都要免費(fèi)繳送該館，從而使館藏迅速增加。

On just over 100 miles of shelving, it houses around 7,000,000 printed volumes, 150,000 manuscript items, about a million maps and 400,000 musical items, as well as providing access to tens of thousands of electronic journals and databases.

在僅100余米的書架上,就擺放著大約700萬冊圖書，15萬冊手抄本，100萬張地圖，40萬份音樂劇本，還有成千上萬的電子期刊和數(shù)據(jù)庫。

Since 1710 the Library has been a legal deposit library, entitled to claim a copy of every book and periodical published in Great Britain and Ireland. Of all the libraries in Europe, the University Library has the largest collection of material on open access, with two million volumes on open shelves and immediately accessible to users.

自1710年來，劍橋的圖書館就是國家的法定書庫之一，所有在英國或愛爾蘭出版的圖書或雜志都必須免費(fèi)送繳該館一份。歐洲所有的圖書館中，劍橋圖書館的開放存取材料是最多的，大約有200萬冊圖書都屬于開放性的資料，供讀者隨時查閱。

The Library's special collections include thousands of medieval manuscripts such as the 5th-century Gospel text known as Codex Bezae; 4,500 incunabula including the Gutenberg Bible and a hand-coloured copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle、papers of scientists such as Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Lord Kelvin and Lord Rutherford; papers of literary and political figures including Lord Acton, Lord Randolph. Churchill, Sir Robert Walpole, Stanley Baldwin, Arthur Schnitzler and Stefan Heym; business archives of Jardine Matheson & Company and Vickers plc; the collections of the Royal Greenwich Observatory, the Royal Commonwealth Society, and the British and Foreign Bible Society.

劍橋圖書館的特別典藏中有上千份中世紀(jì)的手稿，如公元5世紀(jì)的伯撒抄本《福音書》；4500余冊古本，其中包括《古騰堡圣經(jīng)》，手繪本《紐倫堡編年史》；多位科學(xué)家如牛頓、達(dá)爾文、開爾文、盧瑟福等等的手稿和論著；文學(xué)家和政治家如艾克頓公爵、倫道夫公爵、羅伯特沃波爾、斯坦利鮑爾溫、阿爾圖爾施尼茨勒和史蒂芬海姆的論著；怡和洋行及威格士公共有限公司的商業(yè)檔案；皇家格林威治天文臺，皇家聯(lián)邦社團(tuán)，英外社交圣經(jīng)集團(tuán)的相關(guān)資料等等。

The Library's policy is to provide the widest possible access to its collections, both by making its catalogues available online and by digitising a growing range of materials. All of these are available freely to the world via the Internet.

圖書館的政策就是通過目錄在線化和日益豐富藏書的數(shù)字化，為讀者提供最大限度查閱資料的方便。通過網(wǎng)絡(luò)，世界各地均可免費(fèi)共享這些資源。