Cambridge University Library is one of the world’s oldest university libraries – and home to one of the world’s great collections of cultural treasures and research materials. Since its first recorded beginnings in 1416, as a small chest of manuscripts for Cambridge scholars, the Library is now home to a physical collection of nearly ten million books, maps, manuscripts, photographs and priceless objects, spanning thousands of years of human thought and discovery – in more than 2,000 languages. Cambridge University Library preserves and shares the world’s knowledge in physical and digital forms: from a 4,200-year-old Sumerian clay tablet, to 19th and 20th century posters demanding suffrage and equal rights for women. Alongside the archives of Newton, Darwin and Hawking – and some of the world’s earliest fragments of the Quran – is one of the most comprehensive collections of British books anywhere in the world.