The university campus, which includes faculties, colleges, dormitories, research centers and institutes, occupies a significant part of the city. Once at the University of Cambridge, the visitor, spellbound, can walk from one ancient building to another, enjoying general atmosphere medieval university. In this sense, Cambridge University, with its many parks, lawns, fields and rivers, is in no way inferior to Oxford University. The University of Cambridge has 114 libraries. The central one is the university library, which stores more than 8 million books and manuscripts in different languages ​​of the world. The university library is the country's national library, which means it receives a copy of every book that is published in the UK. Unlike the British or Bodleian Libraries, most of the books in the Cambridge University Library are freely available and can be borrowed. There are also libraries in every college and faculty. Many of them are open around the clock, which makes life much easier for students while preparing for the session. There are 8 major museums in Cambridge. Of greatest interest is the Fitzwilliam Museum with collections of exhibits of ancient and modern art. In addition, the city has museums of Archeology and Anthropology, Zoology, History of Science, the Scott Polar Museum and a beautiful botanical garden.

There are several dozens of clubs, associations and societies in Cambridge that contribute to the integration of students into the life of the university. Perhaps there is no such area that would not cover the activities of these societies: here you can take part in archaeological excavations, go hiking, caving, play poker, study the work of J.R.R. Tolkien, archery and much, much more. Participation in the activities of clubs is an integral part of the life of every student.

huge role in student life Cambridge plays sports. There is probably no sport that cannot be practiced at this university. For this purpose, almost every college has its own training fields for tennis, cricket, rugby and football, GYM's, boats, punts, kayaks and more. Each college has sports teams, intra-university sports competitions and championships are held. The central event of the sports year is the so-called. Varsity matches in which Cambridge competes with its eternal rival - Oxford. In order to be in time for classes, often taking place in different parts of the campus, many students use the free and environmentally friendly form of transport, such as a bicycle.

It is no secret that for many applicants who leave their homeland for the first time for a long time, the real test is the experience of life outside their native environment. Numerous national societies help Cambridge students in this. For people from the former Soviet Union in Cambridge there are Russian, Ukrainian, Kazakh and Estonian student societies. Leading politicians, scientists and artists are invited to the weekly events of these associations, parties, language classes and film screenings are organized. Russian and Ukrainian societies are especially active. Theme parties and discos are also held weekly in each college. Winter and summer balls, held several times a year, usually cause a special stir. There are Orthodox and Catholic churches in Cambridge, as well as a synagogue and a mosque. In addition, each college has Anglican churches and chapels. Campus, museums and libraries of Cambridge.

Student Accommodation

  • Cambridge colleges guarantee college-owned accommodation for three years, and most provide for fourth-year students too.
  • The college is more than just a hall of residence: it's for living, studying and socialising.
  • The college communities include undergraduate and research students, teachers and lecturers.

Student career development

A Cambridge degree is an excellent tool for subsequent employment in the most prestigious fields of science and business. In this, university graduates are assisted by a special career service center (The Careers Service), in which announcements of vacancies, internships and possible employment are posted. In the Center you can find special publications and manuals on writing a resume, filling out questionnaires, finding a job, etc. The center also conducts special courses and classes to help students continue their careers. The Cambridge degree also opens the door for employment upon returning home. Since the academic semesters are short and the study at the University is very intensive, Cambridge University strongly recommends not combining study with work.

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Cambridge University Library

The Cambridge University Library is the centrally-administered library of the University of Cambridge in England . It consists of five separate libraries:
* the University Library main building
* the Medical Library
* the Betty and Gordon Moore Library (Centre for Mathematical Sciences)
* the Central Science Library (formerly the Scientific Periodicals Library)
* the Squire Law Library. The Library was housed in the university's "Old Schools" near Senate House until it outgrew the space there and a new library was built. The large site on the western edge of Cambridge city center is now between Robinson College and Memorial Court, Clare College The current librarian is Peter Fox.

architecture

The library was built between 1931 and 1934 under architect Giles Gilbert Scott , who also designed the neighboring Clare Memorial Court (part of Clare College). It bears a marked resemblance to Scott's industrial architecture, a famous example of which is Bankside Power Station (the home of the Tate Modern). Its tower stands 157 feet (48 metre s) tall, six feet shorter than the top of St John "s College Chapel and ten feet taller than the peak of King"s College Chapel . Contemporary reports stated that in opening the building, Chamberlain referred to it as "this magnificent erection", although this phrase is also attributed by tradition to George V The fictional "Dark Tower" in the novel of that name (attributed to C. S. Lewis) was a replica of this building.

The library has been extended several times. The main building houses the Japanese and Chinese collections in the Aoi pavilion, an extension donated by Tadao Aoi and opened in 1998. There are over 5.5 million book s and pamphlet s in the library, more than 1.2 million periodicals, many maps , manuscripts , and specialist [ http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections.htm collections] including that of the Royal Commonwealth Society .

legal deposit library

As a legal deposit library, it is entitled to claim without charge a copy of all books, journals, printed maps and music published in Britain and Ireland. The library is open to all members of the University of Cambridge (although undergraduates in their first two years and University Assistants other than those who work at the library cannot borrow any books). As is traditional among British university libraries, research postgraduates and academics from other UK universities are allowed reference-only access to the library's collection, and members of the public can apply for access with an academic letter of introduction and on payment of a fee . The library is unique amongst the UK's legal deposit libraries in keeping a large proportion of its books on open access and in allowing some categories of reader (for example Cambridge academics, postgraduates and final-year undergraduates) to borrow from its collection. It has a well-used "Tea Room" in which full meals, snacks and beverages are available. The library regularly puts on [ http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/exhibitions/ exhibitions] , usually free to the public, and featuring items from its collections.

special collections

As part of its collection of more than 7,000,000 volumes, the library contains a wealth of printed and manuscript material from down the centuries [ http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections.htm] . These include:

* A copy of the Gutenberg Bible from 1455, the earliest European example of a book produced using moveable type.

*The Bible Society library and the library of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK).

*The Taylor-Schechter Genizah Collection, a store of 140,000 manuscripts and manuscript fragments, mainly in Hebrew and Arabic, from the Ben Ezra synagogue in Cairo .

*E.G. Browne's collection of around 480 codices in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish.

*Papers of Isaac Newton , Lord Kelvin , Ernest Rutherford , George Gabriel Stokes , Joseph Needham , G. E. Moore and Siegfried Sassoon , among others.

*Archives of the Royal Greenwich Observatory.

*Material, such as newsletters relating to various student societies.

References

*Peter Fox (ed.) "Cambridge University Library: the Great Collections" (Cambridge University Press, 1998) ISBN 0-521-62636-6 (Paperback ISBN 0-521-62647-1)

external links

* [ http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/index.htm Cambridge University Library ]
* [ http://ul-newton.lib.cam.ac.uk/ Search the library catalog ]

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“Our library holds the birth certificates of great ideas and world-class discoveries that have taken place over the past two millennia,” said librarian Anne Jarvis. - And now we want all this to become available to everyone. Through the Internet, people from any corner of the world can look into our library. Our project aims not only to make all of our collections available, it will initiate a worldwide dialogue about these books. With a single click, students or scholars who study, for example, theology, politics, history, physics, medieval languages ​​or the history of medicine can immerse themselves in the worlds of the Mediterranean Muslim, Christian and Jewish communities of the 11th century or the time of Isaac Newton and his famous contemporaries ".

Cambridge was able to carry out the project thanks to a £1.5 million grant from Dr. Leonard Polonsky. With this money, the library is going to purchase the necessary equipment to digitize its books. The first collections will be named The Foundations of Faith and The Foundations of Science. The Cambridge staff hope that these collections will become "living libraries" that will constantly grow and develop.

Religion Foundation
The Cambridge religion-related collection includes the world's oldest copy of the Quran and a 8th-century copy of Surah Al-Anfal (the sura designates a chapter of the Quran). The largest collection of Jewish genizah manuscripts in the world is also located here (the genizah contained worn-out Torah scrolls, sacred texts, ritual objects, etc.), including the Taylor-Schechter collection from the Cairo genizah, which has 193,000 fragments. In importance they are on a par with the famous Qumran manuscripts.

Of the Christian treasures, the first place is occupied by the collection of manuscripts, which includes the Beza Codex (Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis). The manuscript dates back to the 5th century and is considered one of the oldest and most important manuscripts of the New Testament in Greek and Latin. The same collection includes the Book of Dir, a Latin evangelist of the 10th century with commentaries of the 12th century in Latin, Old Irish and Gaelic, and the Book of Cern, an Anglo-Saxon prayer book of the 9th century.

Science Foundation
As for the history of science, Cambridge will first of all digitize the collection of Newton's papers, among which are copies of his fundamental work The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, lectures that he gave as a professor of mathematics at Cambridge, and drafts of his work Optics or Treatise on Reflections , refractions, bendings and colors of light. Cambridge also preserved the work of John Flamsteed (1646−1719) and Edmund Halley (1656−1742) - Newton's contemporaries, with whom the latter was in active correspondence.

If the project is successful (and it will require other sponsors to develop it), then the staff of the Cambridge Library plans to further digitize the works of Charles Darwin, physicists James Maskwell and Stephen Hawking, as well as other collections related to the humanities and social sciences.

“Religion and science are the two cornerstones of our project and are fundamental in our attempt to understand the world and our place in it. Thanks to Dr. Polonsky, we are at the beginning of an amazing journey that will lead us into the world of digital libraries. We hope that other people will support us and we will create the world's largest digital library, which will be available to anyone in the world in literally this word,” Jervis summed up.

Send your good work in the knowledge base is simple. Use the form below

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Students, graduate students, young scientists who use the knowledge base in their studies and work will be very grateful to you.

Colleges are not required to enroll students in absolutely all subjects, and therefore, some of them choose not to provide attention to such subjects as architecture, art history and theology, however, most of the colleges still offer a choice of subjects close to the full spectrum. Some colleges remain biased towards certain subjects, such as Churchill's leaning more towards science and technology recruitment, while others, such as St. Catharines' aim for a balanced intake and placement of students into majors.

Student expenses (for accommodation and food prices) vary greatly from college to college. Other institutions maintain a much more informal reputation. So, for example, students at King's College adhere to left-wing political views, and students at Robinson College and Churchill College are making attempts to minimize the harmful effects on the environment. There are also several theological (theological) colleges in Cambridge, which are separate from the University of Cambridge. These institutions include: Westcott House, Westminster College and Ridley Hall Theological College, which are less affiliated with the university but are members of the Cambridge Spiritual Federation.

The curriculum is an unusual mixture of lectures organized by the university departments as well as student inspections conducted by the colleges. ( Scientific disciplines also include laboratory sessions organized by departments). The relative importance of these teaching methods varies depending on the requirements of the subject. Reviews are typically a one-hour weekly meeting where small groups of students (typically one to three) meet with a faculty member or doctoral candidate.

Students will usually need to do all of their pre-meeting assignments in advance, as they will be their topic of discussion throughout the meeting. Also at this meeting, issues related to difficulties in mastering and perceiving the lecture material provided to students during the week can be discussed. This task is usually done in the form of an essay on a topic set by the inspector or in the form of a problem sheet compiled with the help of a lecturer. Depending on the subject and college, students may have from one to four inspections per week. A teacher named William Farish developed the concept of quantitative classification of student work at the University of Cambridge in 1792.

In addition to the 31st college, Cambridge university consists of more than 150 departments, faculties, schools, syndicates and other institutions. Their members, as a rule, are also members of one of the colleges, and the responsibility for the implementation of the entire academic program of the university is divided between them. A "school" at the University of Cambridge is a broad administrative grouping of related faculties, as well as other divisions. Each of them has an elected supervisory body - the school "Council," which consists of representatives of the constituent bodies.

The University of Cambridge has six schools: Arts and Humanities, Biological Sciences, Clinical Medicine, Humanitarian and social sciences, natural sciences, Technologies. Educational and research activities in Cambridge is organized by faculties. Faculties have various organizational substructures that reflect in part their history and in part their operational needs. The structure of faculties may include a number of departments and other institutions. In addition, a small number of organizations, the so-called "Syndicates" (for example - the Cambridge Evaluation Commission, the University News Service and the University Library) are responsible for conducting educational process and research.

Threemthread college(English) Trinity College Trinity College) is one of the 31 colleges at the University of Cambridge. This college has more members (counting students and faculty together) than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford. The college has a very solid reputation, many members of the British royal family were its graduates: King Edward VII, King George VI, Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester and Charles, Prince of Wales. Trinity College has a very strong academic tradition and has won 31 Nobel Prizes (out of 83 received by all university staff). Among his famous alumni- Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, Lord Byron, Bertrand Russell and Vladimir Nabokov.

Library, laboratory, observatory, museum of the University of Cambridge

Cambridge University Library(English) Cambridge University Library listen)) is the centralized academic and research library of the University of Cambridge, consisting of the university's main library and 15 affiliated libraries. The University of Cambridge has 114 libraries, the largest of which is the University Library, also known internally as "the UL". Among its approximately 8 million items, there are geographical maps, notes, manuscripts and drawings. Unlike Oxford's Bodleian Library or the British Library, many of the library's books are available on open shelves. As one of five legal deposit recipients, the library has the right to claim any book published in the UK and Ireland. Every year, its funds are replenished by 120,000 books, not counting donations. The total number of books at the university is about 15 million. The library is open to all members of the university. In June 2010, the university received a donation of £1,500,000 to digitize part of the collections and make them freely available through the Cambridge Digital Library website.

cambridge observatory- an astronomical observatory, founded in 1823 at the University of Cambridge Since 1972, it has been part of the Institute of Astronomy. The library is located in the old building of the observatory. From 1990 to 1998, the Royal Greenwich Observatory was based in Cambridge at Greenwich House, just north of the Cambridge Observatory. In 1912 the Solar Physics Observatory was moved to Cambridge. Observatory scientists took part in the search for the planet Neptune.

Cavendish Laboratory- Faculty of Physics, University of Cambridge. The laboratory was established in 1874 as the world's first educational and scientific laboratory, where students could both study and conduct research together with university staff. Originally located in the heart of Cambridge on Free School Street. Built in the 1970s new complex buildings for the laboratory on the western outskirts of the city.

The laboratory has the traditional honorary title of Cavendish Professor, which is worn by one of the professors of the laboratory. The motto of the laboratory is a phrase uttered by the first director of the Cavendish Laboratory, James Maxwell: “I never discourage a person from trying this or that experiment; if he does not find what he is looking for, he may discover something else.” As of 2012, 29 laboratory researchers have received Nobel Prizes.

During the Second World War, the laboratory carried out research on projects related to nuclear weapons.

Collections and museums of the University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge operates eight museums of arts, culture and science, as well as a botanical garden: the Fitzwilliam Museum - a museum of art and antiquity; Kettle Yard - contemporary art gallery; the Museum of Archeology and Anthropology of the University of Cambridge presents to the attention of visitors a collection of local antiquities, as well as archaeological and ethnographic exhibits from around the world; Zoological Museum of the University of Cambridge; Museum of Classical Archeology, Cambridge; Whipple Museum of History and Science; The Sedgwick Museum of Geosciences is the university's Geological Museum; The Scott Polar Research Institute includes the Polar Museum, dedicated to the study of the Arctic and Antarctic; The University of Cambridge Botanic Gardens is a university botanical garden established in 1831.

Women's education at the University of Cambridge

Initially, only male students could be admitted to the university. The first women's colleges were Girton, which was founded by Emily Davis in 1869, Newnham, which was founded by Anna Clough and Henry Sidgwick in 1872, followed by the establishment of Hughes Hall in 1885 (first established by Elizabeth Phillips Hughes as the Cambridge Pedagogical College for Women), New Hall in 1954 (later renamed Murray Edwards College) and Lucy Cavendish College, founded in 1965. The first female students were tested in 1882, but attempts to make women full members of the university have been collapsed until 1948.

Women were allowed to attend courses, take exams, and from 1881 receive their results in writing; for a brief period at the turn of the 20th century, women were even allowed to receive the same degree of education from the University of Dublin. From 1921, women began to be awarded diplomas, which "granted their owner the Bachelor of Arts degree." However, due to the fact that they were "not fully recognized for Bachelor of Arts degrees", they were excluded from the leadership of the university. From the time students were enrolled in the college, and since the newly established colleges were still closed to women, they found that access to colleges specifically founded for women was also limited.

Despite this, beginning with Churchill College, all male-only colleges began to admit women between 1972 and 1988. One women's college, Girton, even began admitting male students in 1979, but other women's colleges did not follow suit. As a result of the fact that St Hilda's College, Oxford, in 2008, the ban on the admission of male students was lifted, Cambridge remained the only educational institutions in the UK whose colleges still refuse to admit men (there are only three such institutions in Cambridge: Newnham, Murray Edwards College and Lucy Cavendish College). In the 2004-2005 academic year, the sex ratio of university students, including graduate students, was as follows - 52% of men and 48% of women.

Myths, legends, traditions of the University of Cambridge

As a university with a long and rich history, a huge number of different legends and myths were created within its walls. Of course, most of them do not correspond to reality, however, they were actively distributed and continue to be distributed by new generations of students, as well as guides.

A canceled tradition is the "wooden spoon" tradition, whereby this "prize" is awarded to the student with the lowest passing score in the final Tripos mathematics exams. The last such spoon was awarded to Cuthbert Leprier Holthouse in 1909, a rower of the Lady Margaret Boat Club, who was affiliated with St. John's College. This spoon was a meter long, and its handle was made of an oar. It can currently be seen from the Meija Combination Room at St. John's College. Since 1909, the results began to be published in alphabetical order, by class, not in order of points scored. This made it difficult to determine the winner of the wooden spoon (unless that person was in third grade), and so this practice has been terminated.

On every Christmas Eve, BBC Radio and Television airs the Nine Lessons Festival, as well as Carolas (special Christmas songs), performed by the Cambridge King's College Choir. Since the first such broadcast appeared on the radio in 1928 (although the festival began its existence in 1918), radio broadcasting has become a real national Christmas tradition. These radio programs are transmitted worldwide by the BBC World Service, and are also transmitted through the association of hundreds of other radio stations in the United States. The first television broadcast of the festival took place in 1954.

Interestingfacts about cambridge

1. Princes Charles and Edward graduated from Cambridge. When Prince Charles studied here, a bodyguard went with him to all classes.

2. For seven centuries (until 1909) there was a tradition at the university to hand out wooden spoons to students with the worst academic performance.

3. Each faculty has a scarf of its own color, as well as sweatshirts, T-shirts and bags for textbooks and notebooks.

4. The most popular sport here is rowing.

5. Among the people connected in one way or another with the University of Cambridge, there are 88 Nobel laureates - according to this indicator, it occupies one of the first places among higher educational institutions in the world.

6. Lord Byron was very fond of animals. While studying at Cambridge, he was faced with a ban on keeping dogs in rooms and decided to get a bear cub. Since bears were not mentioned in the ban, the university could do nothing about this fact. Over the course of his life, Byron's pets included a fox, a badger, a crocodile, an eagle, a crane, and a heron.

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When we talk about the oldest or largest libraries in the world, it is impossible not to mention the library of the University of Cambridge in the UK.

The fact is that the University of Cambridge - one of the oldest educational institutions in the world - originating in 1209, consists of separate colleges. To date, there are thirty-one such colleges in Cambridge. And of course, each college has its own library. However, the library of Trinity College is of the greatest interest. It is interesting not only for its collection of volumes. The Cambridge Central Library is also of architectural value. After all, it was built by the great English architect Christopher Rem in 1676-1684. In the Trinity College Library, even the bookcases made by carver Greenlin Gibbon are of particular value.

Cambridge students joke that once you enter the Cambridge Central Library, you can stay there forever, it is so big. Well, as they say, there is some truth in every joke. The library building occupies an entire block. But this, as it turned out, was not enough. Therefore, a new building is under construction.

The book collection of the University of Cambridge is incalculable. In 1971, there were 3 million volumes in the Cambridge library, today this figure has certainly grown, as the library's funds are constantly replenished. Both modern editions and ancient manuscripts are kept here. Some of the values ​​of the Cambridge Library are not only of great interest, but even provoke rumors.

For a long time, the calmness of the reading public was disturbed by talk that the Cambridge Library supposedly kept a collection of pornographic literature. Oddly enough, these rumors were confirmed not so long ago. A representative of the library management confirmed the presence in the book depositories of Cambridge of a collection of erotic and pornographic literature, represented by 200,000 illustrated volumes. Moreover, the beginning of this collection was by no means laid in the era of modern glossy magazines "for adults", but in prim Victorian times, when even the legs of a piano were considered an indecent detail and had to be covered without fail.

Why is such literature needed in the library of the most serious university? After all, students will be distracted. "Will not!" - assured the library management, because these copies are not available for students. It turns out that only scientists have access to frivolous publications. And politicians. Why the latter is unclear. But the British took it for granted, so it is necessary.

However, if the historical and scientific value of such a collection of literature seems doubtful to many, then the importance of other treasures of the Cambridge library is undeniable. Among the most valuable publications that are stored in Cambridge, there is, for example, the Guttenberg Bible and the first edition of Homer's poems. In total, there are 4,650 books in Cambridge, whose age exceeds half a millennium. Currently, work is underway to digitize old publications. The costly project, which costs about $480,000, is expected to take about five years to complete. Well, for early printed books that have already lived for an eternity, this is not a time at all.