Month: January 2014

Trial access to Sovetskaia kul’tura digital archive in February 2014

On By europeancollectionsIn E-resources, Russian, Slavonic1 Comment

The current weekly Russian newspaper Kul’tura (Culture) was published during the Soviet period under a variety of titles, the longest-standing of which was Sovetskaia kul’tura (1953-1991). The latest database from EastView is a digital archive of the newspaper, from its earliest days up to late 2013. Only a very few issues of the newspaper are available in physical form in the University Library.

Please send feedback on the trial to slavonic@lib.cam.ac.uk by Monday, 10 February 2014. This date is determined by deadlines for the Library’s Accessions Committee, which will decide whether or not to purchase permanent access. The trial will run until the end of February 2014, but readers’ comments must be submitted by the 10th. The trial can be accessed through the following link: http://ezproxy.lib.cam.ac.uk:2048/login?url=http://dlib.eastview.com/browse/udb/1790

 

EastView describe the newspaper as an “indispensable source of information on the developing and ever changing attitudes towards arts and culture in the Soviet and Russian societies. Throughout the years the newspaper articles reviewed major events in Russian cultural life, in literature, theater, cinematography and arts. In the Soviet period it published critical diatribes against dissident writers Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn, Aksyonov and others, infamous articles condemning modern art exhibitions, chastising avant-garde composers and abstract painters. In modern Russia its reviews and event listings often focus on the cultural life of Moscow and regions, it is known for its topical commentaries on popular culture and politics.”

Mel Bach

The moving word : new exhibition at the University Library

On By europeancollectionsIn French, Historical collectionsLeave a comment

A 13th-century manuscript of Arthurian legend once owned by the Knights Templar is one of the star attractions of the new exhibition at Cambridge University Library.

An important manuscript of the Lancelot-Grail, it lay forgotten and unopened for five centuries until its rediscovery in North Yorkshire and its sale in 1944. Detailing the search for the Holy Grail, it goes on public display for the first time alongside the only existing fragment of an episode from the earliest-known version of the Tristan and Isolde legend. Also on display is an early example of the kind of guide familiar to thousands of today’s holiday-makers: a French phrasebook.

The free exhibition, The Moving Word: French Medieval Manuscripts in Cambridge, looks at the enormous cultural and historic impact of the French language upon life in England, Europe, the Middle East and beyond at a time when French – like Latin before it and English today – was the global language of culture, commerce and politics.

Read more about the exhibition at the Library’s website.

Johann Gottlieb Fichte

On By europeancollectionsIn German, Historical collectionsLeave a comment

200 years ago, on 27th January 1814, Johann Gottlieb Fichte died of typhus in Berlin.  He was 51 years old.

Fichte was a major philosopher of the German idealism movement; his work followed on from Kant and preceded Hegel.  He was appointed Professor of Philosophy at the University of Jena in 1794, but dismissed from that post in 1799 after being accused of atheism.  In 1809 he was offered the Chair of Philosophy at the new University of Berlin, a position which he held until his death and which then remained vacant until Hegel was appointed to it in 1818. Continue reading “Johann Gottlieb Fichte” →

The French Revolution and Pembroke : the Hadley collection

On By europeancollectionsIn College Libraries, French1 Comment

The Hadley collection on Napoleon and the French Revolution held in Pembroke College Library is a good example of the sort of little-used resource which the European Collections blog is trying to make better known. William Sheldon Hadley (1859-1927) spent his entire career at Cambridge. He came up to Pembroke to read classics, and became Master of the College thirty-four years later, holding the post until his death in 1927. 

The Hadley collection, in Pembroke College Library
The Hadley collection, in Pembroke College Library

Cultural historian Tom Stammers, a lecturer in the Department of History at Durham, describes in the following paragraphs why the Hadley material is of such interest.

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The Hadley collection is a precious snapshot of how the French Revolution was understood in the opening decades of the twentieth century, with strength in four key areas. Continue reading “The French Revolution and Pembroke : the Hadley collection” →

Slavonic item of the month : January 2014

On By europeancollectionsIn Historical collections, Russian, SlavonicLeave a comment
Title page of Po tiur'mam i etapam (8620.d.87)
Title page of Po tiur’mam i etapam (8620.d.87)

The December early release from prison of former IUKOS chairman Mikhail Khodorkovskii as well as Pussy Riot members Mariia Alekhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova was a major news story.  Personal experience of imprisonment and exile in tsarist Russia form the subject of the January item of the month – Ivan Belokonskii’s 1887 Po tiur’mam i etapam.

The Bol’shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia (Great Soviet encyclopedia (third edition, R900.R11)) tells us that Ivan Petrovich Belokonskii was born in Chernigov (modern-day Chernihiv) in 1855 and died in Khar’kov (Kharkiv) in 1931.  After studying in Kiev and Odessa, he grew close to the Narodniki, a populist movement largely followed by the educated middle class, and was arrested for agitation in 1879 and sent to eastern Siberia.  He returned in 1886, the year before this book was published.

  Continue reading “Slavonic item of the month : January 2014” →

Juan Gelman and Argentina’s Troubled 20th Century

On By europeancollectionsIn Spanish1 Comment

The great Argentinean poet Juan Gelman passed away on January 14th at the age of 83. He received the Cervantes Prize, the most important Spanish literary award, in 2007, and many of his peers and followers argue that he was the first writer to create a truly Argentinean form of poetry. Certainly, his life and work were inextricably connected to the troubled history of his home country.  A prominent journalist and left-wing political activist as well as a poet, like many of his fellow countrymen and artists he was forced into exile following the 1976 coup. He never again lived in Argentina, and exile was a prominent theme throughout much of his later writing – dealt with in works such as Bajo la lluvia ajena from Interrupciones (classmark: 9007.c.6796-6797) and, with reference to his Jewish parents’ own exile from Russia, Dibaxu (classmark: 2002.8.1688).

Continue reading “Juan Gelman and Argentina’s Troubled 20th Century” →

Update on access to Italian-language titles on Casalini’s Torrossa ebooks platform

On By europeancollectionsIn E-resources, Italian1 Comment

Cambridge University Library is pleased to announce that following the trial access to 113 Italian-language titles on Casalini Libri’s Torrossa ebooks platform, we have now taken the decision to purchase these. The package consists of three current collections of scholarly titles: Language and Literature, Cinema and Theatre, and Cultural Studies. The ebooks are available from the platform link here and are searchable in the LibrarySearch catalogue.

Full-text access is available both on and off campus (using a Raven login). This includes the facility to download, print and copy and paste from the text. Torrossa ebooks can be read on PCs, Apple Macs, laptops, iOS and Android mobile devices, but not on Kindles, Kobos or Nooks. Continue reading “Update on access to Italian-language titles on Casalini’s Torrossa ebooks platform” →

New acquisition: The Gili Collection of Spanish & Catalan books

On By europeancollectionsIn Catalan, Historical collections, New Acquisitions, SpanishLeave a comment
Rusinyol-Santiago.-Oracions-3-Liam1
Rusiñol: Oracions (Barcelona: 1897)

The University Library has recently acquired a collection of over 70 titles from the library of the late Jonathan Gili (1943-2004), a documentary film-maker, small-press publisher and collector of eclectic tastes, and his wife Phyllida. His father was Joan Gili, a publisher and a translator of Lorca who co-founded the most celebrated Spanish bookshop in Britain: Dolphin Books. Jonathan Gili was passionate about printed ephemera. He collected many first editions and rather unique examples of art deco style in print form. His poetic vision of the world is exemplified in this collection, mostly consisting of Catalan and Spanish material ranging in date from the 16th to the 20th centuries. There are also items in Portuguese and Mallorquín, with a smaller number of items in French, Latin or Provençal, all somehow connected with the Iberian peninsula. Continue reading “New acquisition: The Gili Collection of Spanish & Catalan books” →

New acquisitions from Haiti

On By europeancollectionsIn French, New AcquisitionsLeave a comment

The collections of the University Library contain a comprehensive selection of works by major French writers, with a special emphasis on authors currently taught or researched at the University of Cambridge.  The geographical coverage of the collections is particularly wide, including not only France, but areas that are or have been under French influence, such as French overseas territories and former French colonies. The Library actively continues to acquire works which are significant in the contemporary Francophone world.

Books from Haiti
Books from Haiti

The vast majority of the books in French that we purchase are published in France itself. The French publishing industry is active and prolific– we buy books from France on a broad variety of subjects. However, we do not confine our book purchasing to France. In addition, we actively seek out books from other countries where books are published in French. In a sequence of blog posts we will try to give an idea of the Library’s collecting activity from French sub-Saharan Africa, French-speaking Canada, Réunion and Mauritius, Martinique and Guadeloupe.

Acquisition from some of these areas is very straightforward, but from others it is rather problematic. Countries may publish extensively in French, but distribution networks are very poor, even in the 21st century. It is difficult to find out what is being published, and even harder in some cases to acquire the material.

Continue reading “New acquisitions from Haiti” →

Early herbals from Rome, Mainz and Lübeck

On By europeancollectionsIn German, Historical collections1 Comment
Mulber, from Herbarius latinus, Inc.4.A.1.3b[19]
Mulber, from Herbarius latinus, Inc.4.A.1.3b[19]

Passing reference was made in Jaap Harskamp’s post on sixteenth-century Dutch botanical publishing to Konrad von Megenberg’s Buch der Natur, a general work on natural history containing some of the earliest printed references to plants. There were six incunabula editions of the text, the first printed by Johann Bämler in Augsburg and dated 30 October 1475. Cambridge University Library does not have any pre-1501 edition of Buch der Natur, though we do have two 19th century editions of the text (MA.5.55 ; MA.5.76), which do not reproduce the illustrations. A modern critical edition is also in process (746:01.c.25.57). This is a publishing enterprise of long duration, keeping librarians on their toes and making for slight complications in processing. Volume 2 (the text) was published in 2003, but the publisher’s website indicates that the project is still on-going, with an introduction (v. 1), a commentary (v. 3) and a dictionary (v. 4) to appear “at a later stage”. Continue reading “Early herbals from Rome, Mainz and Lübeck” →