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camdiglib.bsky.social
Cambridge Digital Library
@camdiglib.bsky.social
3.8K followers 460 following 81 posts
Explore Cambridge Digital Library:
https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/
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camdiglib.bsky.social
Blow me down with a shooting star! 💫 ✨ 🌟 🤩
A rare manuscript copy of 天元玉曆祥異賦 (The Tianyuan Jade Calendar in Verse Prose on the Auspicious and Unusual Signs). 10 vols with oodles of stunning hand coloured illustrations on this work of Chinese #astrology to explore!
cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-FH-0...
Winds blow and waves crash - how would you interpret the signs? https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-FH-00020-00038/13 Strange beasts run across the sky: https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-FH-00020-00043/95
November 4, 2025 at 10:04 AM
camdiglib.bsky.social
Will you be doing the Danse Macabre tonight or jumping on your steed to run and hide under the duvet? #Halloween
1) The Dance of Death, Nuremberg Chronicle (cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/PR-INC-...)
2) The Cambridge Bestiary (cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-II-0...)
😱 💀 👻 🧙‍♀️ 😬 ☠️ 🙈
Five skeletons dancing from their graves - a scene depicting the Danse Macabre from the Nuremberg Chronicle. An illumination from a medieval bestiary manuscript showing a tiger on the left and a man on horseback carrying a sword and a little dog on the right.
October 31, 2025 at 11:15 AM
camdiglib.bsky.social
...And you thought you were stretched too thin!
😬
cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-DD-0...
October 1, 2025 at 11:03 AM
camdiglib.bsky.social
Q: When is it a good thing that life is dragon you round in circles?
A: When it's these dragons doing the dragin!
Check out the recently digitised Christ’s College Statutes, the ‘Treasury’ copy, from 1506!
cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-CHRI...
September 1, 2025 at 8:38 AM
camdiglib.bsky.social
Not quite the #perseids, but Newton's observations of the comet of 1682!
#astronomy #sky #lookup
cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-...
Diagrams showing Newton's observations of the comet of 1682.
August 12, 2025 at 9:30 AM
camdiglib.bsky.social
Need a quick intro applying digital scholarship and data science in modern library work?
👀 Look no further! 👀
@libereurope.bsky.social's 'DS Topic Guides' have been launched today at #LIBER2025!
libereurope.github.io/ds-topic-gui...
July 3, 2025 at 12:55 PM
camdiglib.bsky.social
Newton's getting all prophetic! "And hence it came to pass, that for exploding the festivals of the heathens, the principal festivals of the Christians succeeded; as [...] the celebrating of May-day with flowers in the room of the floralia"
#Beltane / #MayDay
cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-...
May 1, 2025 at 10:11 AM
camdiglib.bsky.social
Clockmaker John Harrison was born #onthisday in 1693.
Learn about the adventures of his famous marine chronometer (which include some pirate action during the mutiny on the Bounty!) in the digitised papers of the Board of Longitude:
cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/...
April 3, 2025 at 6:20 PM
camdiglib.bsky.social
"The God of Love shoots an arrow at the Lover."
If only all shots came from Cupid's bow?
cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-GG-0...
❤️🏹❤️🏹❤️🏹
Le Roman de la Rose (CUL MS Gg.4.6)
"God of Love shoots arrow at Lover" - an illuminated miniature from Le Roman de la Rose (CUL MS Gg.4.6), an allegorical love poem written in Old French.
February 14, 2025 at 10:46 AM
camdiglib.bsky.social
Is it me or does this sun look a bit gassy?
Either way... check out the 2 tiny little ships sailing away from the eclipse its causing! ⛵🌬️⛵🌞
cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-...
A sketch of the sun with a face - part of an astrological diagram of an eclipse. A sketch of the Earth during an eclipse, showing continents and two little ships sailing on the sea - part of an astrological diagram of an eclipse.
January 30, 2025 at 12:53 PM
camdiglib.bsky.social
Wonder why giraffes always look so cross? There's something about the facial expressions... this one printed in China in 1489!
cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-FC-0...
January 29, 2025 at 1:43 PM
camdiglib.bsky.social
We've digitised a 13th c manuscript copy of a homily he wrote about st John's Gospel, but it's in Greek, so probably not as interesting as his matrix ideas! We have an approx lifespan of c.810-c.877 for him though which might help?
cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-FF-0...
January 26, 2025 at 12:30 PM
camdiglib.bsky.social
You spin me right round,
like medieval volvelle,
right round, round...
cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-GONV...
This intricate device in a manuscript from @caiuscollege.bsky.social sure is a stunning head-turner!
Rotating diagram (volvelle) with three parchment disks organised concentrically on top of each other and fastened to the page; the second and third one have hands in blue and pink with drawings of, respectively, the sun and moon on them in gold and silver; a circular opening on the third (upper) disk reveals a silver layer on the surface that it covers on the disk underneath.
January 22, 2025 at 10:06 AM
camdiglib.bsky.social
❄️ ❄️ ❄️ Feeling festive yet? ❄️ ❄️ ❄️
Isaac Newton certainly is - Check out these snowflakes!
"... snowy figures of wch in ye same snow are great in variety"
(From his notes on Hook's Micrographia)
❄️ ❄️ ❄️ ❄️ ❄️ ❄️ ❄️ ❄️ ❄️ ❄️ ❄️ ❄️
cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-...
December 13, 2024 at 11:48 AM
camdiglib.bsky.social
When you're trying to decide if you should wear that old pirate hat to the party...
The Breviary of Marie de Saint Pol (MS Dd.5.5) never fails to amaze!
cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-DD-0...
November 14, 2024 at 9:13 AM
camdiglib.bsky.social
Some of the most wonderful shades of beige!
#WorldPoetryDay
What will you discover?
cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk
March 21, 2024 at 12:21 PM
camdiglib.bsky.social
We'd love to hear your #WorldPoetryDay discoveries in our collections! (16/16 🧵)
Go on, get searching and have a rummage: cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk
A collage of digitised collections containing poetry from the University of Cambridge's Digital Library https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/
March 21, 2024 at 12:14 PM
camdiglib.bsky.social
And you can even find our personal favourite, 'Digital' a poem about us by Imtiaz Dharker!
#WorldPoetryDay (15/16 🧵)
cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk
March 21, 2024 at 12:11 PM
camdiglib.bsky.social
Or maybe you can solve this alchemical mystery?
#WorldPoetryDay (13/16 🧵)
cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-GONV...
Medical texts (Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, MS 181/214) An unidentified alchemical text with diagrams.
March 21, 2024 at 12:02 PM
camdiglib.bsky.social
Quia per Incarnati:
"For by the mystery of the Word made flesh,
the light of thy brightness has shone anew into the eyes of our mind,
Minerva has sprung from the head of Jove."
David Jones' poetry and painting combine!
#WorldPoetryDay (4/16 🧵)
cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-KY-D...
David Jones' Quia per Incarnati - a painted poem
March 21, 2024 at 11:41 AM
camdiglib.bsky.social
Go on a journey with William Langland's, Piers Plowman, Newnham College, MS 4
#WorldPoetryDay (3/16 🧵)
cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-NEWN...
March 21, 2024 at 11:36 AM
camdiglib.bsky.social
One of the earliest surviving examples of English verse, Caedmon's hymn written in the back of the Moore Bede, mid 8th century #WorldPoetryDay (2/16 🧵)
cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-KK-0...
Cadmon’s Hymn, in the Northumbrian Old English dialect in the Moore Bede, MS Kk.5.16 (this is one of the earliest surviving pieces of English verse)
March 21, 2024 at 11:34 AM
camdiglib.bsky.social
For #WorldPoetryDay of course there’s Brooke, Sassoon and Tennyson, but there’s also poetic flower arranging, dragon slaying, French romance, some musings from Darwin, a poetical Theory of Screws and even one about us! (1/16 🧵)
cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk
A collage of digitised collections from the University of Cambridge containing poetry
March 21, 2024 at 11:29 AM
camdiglib.bsky.social
That famous old red squirrel saying:
"Whilst the naked soldier fights
grotesques in the margins,
Thou shouldst sit up
and look cute in the corner."
Have fun exploring the margins of this book of Psalter fragments (MS Add. 4085)!
cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-...
February 8, 2024 at 9:03 AM
camdiglib.bsky.social
So where were you 978 years ago?
Oooh, let me think, 23 January 1045?
- I was attending the marriage and coronation of Queen Edith of course!
From the sumptuous Life of St Edward the Confessor (MS Ee.3.59)
cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-EE-0...
January 23, 2024 at 11:58 AM