 |
 |
Dear colleagues, You may have heard about the campaign by the University of Kent and Canterbury Cathedral to save the Mendham Collection, a historic library of manuscripts and printed material. The collection was given to the Law Society in the 1860s, and then loaned by them to the University of Kent and Canterbury Cathedral in 1984. You can browse through the collection's holdings on the University's library catalogue by looking up the keyword 'Mendham'. https://catalogue.kent.ac.uk/Search/Results?lookfor=mendham&type=AllFields&submit=Find Although University of Kent and Canterbury Cathedral have an agreement with the Law Society until the end of 2013, they have decided to sell the most valuable items at auction to raise funds. On 18 July, Sotheby's took away about 300 of the most valuable books. Colleagues in and beyond Kent feel strongly that the whole collection should be kept together and be accessible for academics, students and the wider community. We are entreating the Law Society to pause so that we can try to find a way to preserve the collection intact for current and future researchers. We have been delighted with the response from across the world to our petition, which has attracted more than 2800 signatures since it was launched on 19 July. We hope that we can keep the momentum going: please consider signing it, and forwarding it on to people you think might be interested. The Law Society of England and Wales: Stop the break-up and sale of the Mendham Collection: https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/the-law-society-of-england-and-wales-stop-the-break-up-and-sale-of-the-mendham-collection?utm_campaign=petition_page&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=share_petition Kind regards, Trudy Turner Assistant Director - Library Collections Information Services Templeman Library University of Kent Canterbury CT2 7NU 01227 823113