Beethoven, Orwell and more on display – Tuesday 6 June, 12-4.30pm

You are warmly invited to this year’s Treasures Of The Written Word on Tuesday 6 June, 12 to 4.30pm, in the Roberts Building Foyer. The event is open to all, and booking is not required: just drop in.

This annual event is a chance to see some of the treasures held in the library’s Special Collections, Archives and Records, and to talk to the staff who work with them. This year we’ll also have students and volunteers talking about their Connected Curriculum projects with the collections, and our popular conservation demonstrations. See below for the full programme.

Highlights will include a letter by Beethoven, George Orwell’s notes for his novel 1984, miniature children’s books from the 1700s, one of the first printed anatomy text books with pop-up diagram from the C16th, illuminated Mediaeval manuscripts in Hebrew and Latin, some of the earliest European music notation to survive, model furniture belonging to archives on the history of school education, documents on the history of UCL itself, radical design from rare C20th magazines, newly discovered Bentham manuscripts describing a dramatic prisoners’ escape, and selections from the fascinating Huguenot Library.

You’ll also be able during the first session to ask our students to look up your favourite words in early dictionaries, or find out whether your favourite area of London was anything more than fields in our C18th London maps. In the second session you can have a go at transcribing Jeremy Bentham’s handwriting, or at other times during the event hear how digitising rare materials can aid research.

Timetable

12 – 1.30pm

• Rare printed books
• Mediaeval manuscript fragments
• Institute of Education rare books
• History of UCL
• Digitising rare materials

1.30 – 3pm

• Orwell collections
• Educating children – archives from the Institute of Education
• Hebrew and Jewish collections
• Bentham manuscripts
• Transcribe Bentham

3 – 4.30pm

• Mediaeval and Renaissance books
• Archives and manuscripts
• C20th poetry and small-press collections
• Huguenot Library
• Digital collections

12-4pm

• Live conservation demonstrations

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Special Collections, Archives and Records team.