Welcome to the Cambridge Library Collection (CLC)

For the past five years we have been working with the Cambridge University Library and several other world-class institutions to digitise and reproduce out-of-copyright books, mainly from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Some of the originals we encounter are extremely rare, and many offer challenges such as folded maps and illustrations that are often omitted in modern reprints (we put them on the web for our readers' use). Our staff take great pains to ensure that every page is present, and that our digitised images are thoroughly 'cleaned' so as to remove the inevitable marks of wear and tear. The aim is to provide a reprint that is as clear as the original when it was new, rather than a facsimile of an old book, damage and all.

CLC covers a huge range of subjects, from aesthetics to zoology, focusing on academic and non-fiction publications that were landmarks in their time, or contain data that is still useful for researchers today. We take advice from specialists about which works to include, and provide details of the original publication date and edition in the blurb for each book. We have published over six thousand volumes, and add more every month, so please visit regularly to see what's new.

'Using the resources of the University Library among others, Cambridge University Press has used the latest digital technology to scan and reprint a superb range of out-of-copyright titles, most available only in specialist libraries.' - Journal of Classics Teaching

If you have a query about Cambridge Library Collection, email Customer Services at directcs@cambridge.org

Endorsements of the Cambridge Library Collection

'The Cambridge Library Collection has been masterfully conceived and pristinely produced. These volumes are no backroom photocopies of faded and dingy digitized rags but tightly bound volumes of brilliant leaves studded with crisp black type. To hold one of these clean cream and red (or blue, or green) volumes in one's hands is to travel back in time – to experience the wonder of peering into a scholarly work of the highest order and seminal significance at the moment of its appearance. Cambridge University Press has provided the scholarly world with an incomparable resource with the publication of the CLC. Kudos to Cambridge.'

Roger D. Woodard, Andrew van Vranken Raymond Professor of the Classics, Professor of Linguistics, University of Buffalo (The State University of New York)

'This laudable initiative makes readily available a superb library of modern scholarship's foundational classics. The use of the best scanning technology produces pristine, superior reprints, which are a pleasure to hold and read.'

Robert L. Fowler, Henry Overton Wills Professor of Greek, University of Bristol

'A splendid series of handsome books providing access to the texts on which modern scholarship is built.'

David Parker, Edward Cadbury Professor of Theology, University of Birmingham

'Important volumes which have previously only been available infrequently at exorbitant prices through second-hand booksellers are now in ready and affordable supply. The digital imaging is of high quality, as is the overall book production … splendid and very highly recommended.'

Paul Foster, School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh, in The Expository Times

'Using the resources of the University Library among others, Cambridge University Press has used the latest digital technology to scan and reprint a superb range of out-of-copyright titles, most available only in specialist libraries.'

Journal of Classics Teaching

'Cambridge University Press are to be warmly congratulated on this initiative: the reissuing of old books from various publishers. … Printing is digital … and generally very good; binding is adhesive and sturdy; the paper used is smooth and commendably opaque.'

Journal of the Printing Historical Society

'Lovely books … great to have them in this nice edition.'

Professor R.M.W. Dixon, Cairns Institute, James Cook University, Queensland

'The individual volumes have been taken from the Cambridge University Library and have been scanned page by page. Then the pages have been digitally cleaned before being reproduced. The result is a remarkably clear, unsullied text, which is visually a pleasure to contemplate and very easy to read.'

Professor Raymond Geuss, University of Cambridge