Firefighters battled into the night to try salvage the University of Cape Town's Jagger Library after a runaway fire quickly spread to the campus on the slopes of Devil's Peak on Sunday.

According to the UCT website, the Special Collections library consists of printed and audiovisual materials on African studies and a wide array of other specialised subjects, as well as more than 1,300 sub-collections of unique manuscripts and personal papers. The collection of books and pamphlets exceeds 85,000 items on African studies alone. It is understood that some material has been captured digitally.