Genuine article

While most university libraries complain that the cuts are robbing them of books to put on their shelves, Aberdeen University has shown unusual generosity. Rolf Rehberg, a historian from Mecklenburg's Rostock University in Germany, was in Aberdeen earlier this year for its quincentenary celebrations, and was fascinated to discover a 16th-century manuscript by Tilemann Stella, a Mecklenburg-born mathematician who was also a geographer, cartographer, engineer and administrator. He asked for a copy, but instead Aberdeen has made Mecklenburg a present of the 400-year-old manuscript, to mark the town's 1,000th anniversary celebrations.