By Debora Sturzo Thanks to the mediation of the Consortium of European Research Libraries (CERL) and the support of the Erasmus+ Traineeship grant, I was able to carry out a three-month internship at the National Art Library of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, from June to September 2025, under the supervision of Catherine Yvard, special collection curator.  The National Art Library…

by Jemima Bennett, PhD candidate – University of Kent/Bodleian Libraries For four weeks in September and October 2025, I had the amazing opportunity, as a CERL grantee, to work with the incunables at the Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation in Piraeus, Greece. My placement consisted of creating records for the books for CERL’s database, Material Evidence in Incunables (MEI), and linking these with images I had uploaded to CERL’s Provenance Digital Archive (PDA).

CERL was officially registered as a company on 24 June 1994. We celebrated our tenth anniversary at the National Library of Scotland in 2004 and were extremely pleased to be able to return to Edinburgh for our Annual General Meeting in October 2025. We were happy to welcome so many currently members to our meeting, and honoured to be able to welcome Dr Ann Matheson, former Chairman of CERL, as our guest.

“This course was very useful and packed with information.” — 2016 student Course Length: 30 hours Course Week: 31 May–5 June 2026 Format: in person, University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA Fee: ...

Studying the 'life' of Spanish incunabula at Huntington Library (San Marino, California) By Iván Pérez Marinas Huntington Library, San Marino, California Hola! My name is Iván Pérez Marinas, Curator of Manuscripts and Incunabula at the National Library of Spain (Biblioteca Nacional de España, BNE) and Ph.D. in Hispanic Medieval Studies from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Due to the fact that I got one of the CERL grants for 2025, I made a stay co-financed by the Huntington Library (San Marino, California) to collaborate for one month, from September 15 to October 14, researching copies of the Spanish incunabula that this institution has and including my results in…

YouTube video by CERL – Consortium of European Research Libraries

By Tomás de Brito, Ampersand In June 2025, Ediciones Ampersand became the first special member from South America to join the CERL community. We seize this opportunity to introduce ourselves through this blog entry by delving into the heart of our library: its founding collections. Fig. 1 Main window of the library. © photo, Pablo Cosgaya Before we discuss these matters, it is important to highlight our publishing activities, since the library is inseparable from them.

Dat de academische vrijheid onder druk staat, komt niet door de ‘linkse cancelcultuur’, betogen universitair docent Dick Zijp en universitair hoofddocent Mirko Tobias Schäfer. Zij hekelen de beeldvorm...

By Tomáš Klimek, National Library of the Czech Republic This year marks the 900th anniversary of the death of the first Czech chronicler, Cosmas, who served as dean of the Prague chapter and died in 1125. His life’s work, the Chronicle of the Czechs, written towards the end of his long life, is the earliest known account of Czech history. And without exaggeration, we can say that Cosmas didn’t merely record history – he helped shape it.

Dr Sarah M. Griffin, Curator of Unfolding Time: The Medieval Pocket Calendar From February to May 2025, Lambeth Palace Library hosted Unfolding Time: The Medieval Pocket Calendar.[1] The exhibition brought together a rare and remarkable type of medieval folded book for the first time—the concertina-fold almanac—and set them alongside treasures from Lambeth’s own collection. Folded in a zigzag pattern to form a neat, easily transportable packet of information, their playful form is emphasised by their colourful and almost entirely pictorial content, all of which relates to time.

By Louise Amazan, Daryl Green & Garrelt Verhoeven (IFLA RBSC) Introduction On April 24th 2025 the Standing Committee for Rare Books & Special Collections (RBSC) of IFLA and CERL’s Bookbinding group joined together for a seminar at the Bibliothèque National de France. With the title Médiations du patrimoine en bibliothèque: enjeux et perspectives / Meditations on Libraries and Heritage Collections…

Join us for this celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Sustainable Heritage MSc programme at UCL Institute for Sustainable Heritage.

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By Charlotte Denoël, Head of the Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts Service, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Manuscripts Department Fig. 1 Fabrique de l'art - home page of the database A new database has recently been put online, "Fabrique de l'art. Couleurs et matériaux de l'enluminure". This database has been produced as part of the research program "La couleur: artefacts, matière et cognition", conducted from 2021 to 2023 with funding from the four-year research plan at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), in partnership with the Institut national d'histoire de l'art (INHA).