A DUBLIN woman has made history by becoming Cambridge University library’s first female librarian in its 650-year history.
Anne Jarvis (46) has been deputy librarian at Cambridge University library since 2000.
A graduate in history of Trinity College Dublin, her library career included posts at Fás and Coopers and Lybrand before she began working in academic libraries.
She worked at Dublin City University and TCD before moving to Cambridge. During this period she also served for two years as vice-president at Wolfson College, where she has been a fellow since 2000.
Cambridge University library is home to more than eight million books and volumes and is one of a small number of “legal deposit” libraries in Britain and Ireland. Legal deposit libraries are entitled to a free copy of every book, journal, map and music published in the UK.
The library, which has two million volumes on open shelves, is believed to contain the largest open-access collection in Europe.
Highlights of the library’s special collections include the papers of Isaac Newton, an archive of Charles Darwin’s correspondence and a copy of the Gutenberg Bible from 1455.
This is the earliest European example of a book produced using moveable type.
Ms Jarvis said she was excited by the promotion as Cambridge was already one of the world’s great research libraries.
