Internet resources: Cambridge University Library to publish rare faith and science books on Internet

Thousands of rare books and manuscripts at Cambridge University Library – including handwritten notes by Sir Isaac Newton – are to be digitized and made available online thanks to a £1.5m donation on the part of the former businessman Leonard Polonsky (an old boy of Oxford University). This gift will be used to start the Digital Library. Digitization will be completed in stages, with the first collections to be called "The Foundations of Faith" and "The Foundations of Science".

Among the Library's religious collections are some of the world's most ancient Qur'ans and an eighth century copy of the Surat al-Anfal, the Qur'an's eighth chapter. Judaism is represented by the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Collection containing 193,000 fragments of manuscripts as significant as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Christian documents include a Greek New Testament manuscript, the Codex Bezae Cantabrigiensis, and a 1455 copy of the Gutenberg Bible, the earliest European book produced using movable type.

It is hope that further funding could lead to the digitization of manuscripts from Darwin and Stephen Hawking, continuing the story of science into the modern age. The priceless collections on Internet will be available to everyone worldwide.

The Cambridge University Library’s holdings include 8 million books and periodicals, a million of maps and thousands of manuscripts.