Poetry, Art and the Fight for Clean Rivers: 2026 at Cambridge University Library is set to be an exciting year! 🛶🐟📚 Get ready for our major new exhibition, the return of The Really Popular Book Club, and much more besides. 🔎 Find out more: https://loom.ly/pxFfHO0

Need some festive cheer? Father Christmas' ABC, published in 1894, is chock-full of delights. 1. The cover artwork, as charming now as the day it was published 2. Decorating the tree with little toys 3. 'T is for the Toys, that cure all our ills' 4. 'R for the Reindeer' 1894.13.170

See you next year @theul.bsky.social #CambridgeUniversityLibraries #WinterSolstice #YaldaNight #Midwinter

🎄Christmas is fast approaching! ☃️Please remember that Cambridge University Library will be closed 24 December 2025 to 1 January 2026 inclusive. 🌟We re-open at 9am on 2 January 2026. 🔗More info on last dates for request and other services: https://loom.ly/JAHIoXk

🕯️Today, the Winter Solstice, feels a fitting time to share these photos with you from our recent Manuscripts by Candlelight* event. 🕯️ Our visitors were able to enjoy something of the atmosphere in which these precious books and manuscripts were once read. *LED 'candles' only!

❄️ Deck the Conservation Studio with paper snowflakes! ❄️ ✂️Sharon from the Conservation Department has been busy making these beautiful paper decorations. 🎼 Music is by the very talented UL choir.

It's time for the last medieval agricultural chore of the year. December was for slaughtering the pigs, to provide provisions for the harsh winter months. This image shows a detail from an early 14th century East Anglian Book of Hours (CUL MS Dd.4.17). #CambridgeUniversityLibrary

Low key, but definitely Christmas at the UL @theul.bsky.social

"We connect people to ideas, and ideas to one another." This year’s Annual Review highlights the remarkable breadth of work undertaken by our wonderful colleagues across our Libraries and Archives network, and at the University Library. 🔎Read it: https://loom.ly/3cGDvuQ

The Solexa Next Generation Sequencing archive is now available for public study at Cambridge University Library. The archive has been donated to The Cambridge History of Innovation Project (CHIP) by Sir David Klenerman and Sir Shankar Balasubramanian. 🔗 https://loom.ly/E9hlqOY

Festive greetings to all! @theul.bsky.social has purchased two 2026 publisher collections, hosted on JSTOR: Cornell University Press and State University of New York Press (SUNY). Backlist title access is included. ebookscambridge.wordpress.com/2025/12/18/c...

The 2026 Sandars Lectures on 'What will survive of us', by Joan Winterkorn MBE are now available to watch online ▶️https://loom.ly/5bkd50k

Thank you to our Conservation team, who have been working on the de-install of the #CuriousCures exhibition – ensuring that the books and manuscripts, from our own collections and beyond, are cared for with great skill and attention to detail #CULConservation #Conservation

We’re proud to be part of the Libraries Alliance - a new partnership working to strengthen libraries of all kinds. Our Head of Public Engagement, Dr Chris Burgess, recently joined other members of the Alliance to share progress with Libraries Minister Baroness Twycross at the @bodleian.ox.ac.uk.

✨This book was once owned by Jane Austen! ✨ There are very few books that Jane Austen is known to have owned, making this one at the UL incredibly special. We're delighted to show it to you today, on her 250th birthday! #JaneAusten250

🎄We have a special festive treat for you today! ✨ The video of the UL's Christmas Carol Concert is now live on YouTube: https://loom.ly/i1aAGZA

The the arms of Sir William Pickering (1516-75), motto ‘hasta quando señor’ (‘Until when, Lord?’) on a copy of Archimedes (Basel, 1544). Pickering was Gentleman in Waiting to Henry VIII & later Elizabeth I’s Ambassador to the Netherlands and Germany. @theulspeccoll.bsky.social M.2.12.

Leo XIV is the 1st Augustinian Pope, but did you know that his order once performed green-fingered, dragon-slaying miracles? @drkrisztinailko.bsky.social from @camhistory.bsky.social @queens.cam.ac.uk reveals the forgotten lives of these wild medieval saints 👇 https://bit.ly/4rP25Qj #skystorians 🗃️

✨Celebrating our library stars at the 2025 Professional Services Awards! ✨ Team winner: the Department of Engineering Library Team Team winner: the Cambridge University Library Participation Team Individual winner: Hélène Fernandes, Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics Library

Robins in the snow, a pup in a party hat, and a cart full of holly! The Victorians certainly knew how to do festive content. 1: The bright surprise for little eyes, 1884.7.702) 2 & 3: Father Christmas' ABC, 1894.13.170

❄️☃️The EFL will close our doors at 5pm on Friday 19 December, and reopen at 9.30am on Monday 5 January for staff winter leave. ☃️❄️ Try not to miss us too much while we're gone 😉📖📚✒️🫖

Write an essay to win £500 📝 Just over a week to go to enter your essay proposals to the Gordon Duff Prize. This opportunity is open to all University of Cambridge members. Deadline for proposals: 19 December 2025 Find out more: https://loom.ly/xZZOdOc

🎄Christmas is fast approaching! ☃️Please remember that Cambridge University Library will be closed 24 December 2025 to 1 January 2026 inclusive. 🌟We re-open at 9am on 2 January 2026. 🔗More info on requesting books and other services: https://loom.ly/JAHIoXk

Black British Voices: Black British Collections. Cambridge University Library is forming a community panel of Black British individuals to help shape its 2027 exhibition & events programme. 🗓️Deadline: 14 Dec 2025 🔗loom.ly/9lDrGVY This project is supported by The National Lottery Heritage Fund.

An unidentified late fifteenth-century coat of arms in a copy of Laudivio de Vezzano’s ‘Epistolæ magni Turci’, printed at Treviso c. 1475. Later in the collection of William Morris, then presented to @theulspeccoll.bsky.social by Stephen Gaselee in 1934. Inc.5.B.9.1[4023].

In Cambridge, the only thing we have in common with this photo is the umbrella ☔ Nothing gets you in the mood for Christmas like a wet English winter... Victorian book illustration: Father Christmas' ABC (1894.13.170).

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis will evoke childhood memories for so many of us. If you'd like to share your thoughts on this book, join us online at the next #ReallyPopularBookClub on 16 December at 7pm. Register to attend: https://loom.ly/yRoMFnE#ReallyPopularBookClub Pictured: CUL 1965.7.2989

🎄It wouldn't really be Christmas without the UL carol concert! 🎵 Join us in the Entrance Hall 10th & 12th December at midday for our annual Christmas carols. Image is a drawing by Ida Waugh from a Victorian book of Christmas Carols (1883.9.73).

If you're after a Friday read? Why not join us on a virtual adventure to explore a different way of thinking about how we interact and engage with digitised cultural heritage: www.theheritagelab.in/digital-rasa...

📣This is your last chance visit the #CuriousCures exhibition before it closes tomorrow, Saturday 6 December. 🔗Book your FREE tickets now: https://loom.ly/kVqsPRY#CuriousCures Pictured: MS Dd.6.29

🎄Nothing says Christmas like the University Library carol concert! 🎵 Join us in the Entrance Hall at midday on December 10 and 12 for our annual performance of Christmas carols.

📣There are just two more days to visit the #CuriousCures exhibition before it closes on Saturday 6 December! 🔗Book your FREE tickets now: https://loom.ly/kVqsPRY#CuriousCures Pictured: 1. Pregnant woman (MS li.5.11) 3. Vein Man and Zodiac Man (MS Add.3303(3))

Darwin's archive, including Collier's famous portrait, was recognised on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register this year. The project was a collaboration with @theul.bsky.social, @nhm-london.bsky.social, English Heritage’s Down House, @rbgkew.bsky.social & @natlibscot.bsky.social. buff.ly/3J80NI8

Our Conservation team has created a pigment for research using woad grown in their Dye Garden at the UL. 🌱 This video explains the process! 🧪 #DyeGarden #PracticeBasedResearch #Woad #CULConservation #CambridgeUniversityLibraries #OrganicPigment #NaturalColourants

North Wing reflections @theul.bsky.social, Late Duty Librarian. #AlphabetChallenge #WeekWforWindows 📷 #photography

Do come! Based on research done last year on Baldwin papers @theul.bsky.social supplemented by Women’s Library @lselibrary.bsky.social collections

Our Cultural Heritage Imaging Laboratory (CHIL) recently attended the Association of Historical and Fine Arts Photographers' annual conference to deliver a series of talks and workshops showcasing their innovative work in heritage imaging. Images show the workshops run by Błażej Mikuła & Mark Box.

📣This is your final week to visit the #CuriousCures exhibition at Cambridge University Library. 🔗Book your FREE tickets now: https://loom.ly/kVqsPRY#CuriousCures Image by kind permission of Trinity College, Cambridge (MS O.1.20)

Lovely blue sky view of the architectural highlight of Cambridge city centre. (it's @theul.bsky.social obvs)

📣Hurry! You only have until 6 December to visit the #CuriousCures exhibition at Cambridge University Library. 🔗Book your FREE tickets now: https://loom.ly/kVqsPRY#CuriousCures 🔎 Image: Aldobrandino da Siena, Régime du corps (Cambridge, University Library, MS Ii.5.11)

We've got some HUGE news! We've DOUBLED in size overnight! Not only have we added "some" more Cairo Genizah fragments, but "ALL" of them @theul.bsky.social !!! This now brings the total number of items in Cambridge Digital Library to OVER 160,000! cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/...

Black British Voices: Black British Collections. Cambridge University Library is forming a community panel of Black British & Black Northern Irish individuals to help shape its 2027 exhibition & events programme. 🗓️ Deadline: 14 Dec 2025 🔗More info: https://loom.ly/9lDrGVY

Cambridge, John Speed's 'Theatre' 1611/12 showing the house I lived in (shared) from Oct 1990 - May 1992. (Cambridge Digital Library/ Ben Hall photograph)

📣Hurry! You only have until 6 December to visit the #CuriousCures exhibition at Cambridge University Library. 🔗Book your FREE tickets now: https://loom.ly/kVqsPRY#CuriousCures 🔎 Vein Man and Zodiac Man, from a leaf of medieval folding almanac. MS Add.3303(3)

Red kites now a common and wonderful sight on the A10 commute from Ely to Cambridge. This one from Archibald Thorburn’s ‘British birds’ (London, 1915-1918). Lib.3.91.437-441 @theul.bsky.social

🔔 The University of Cambridge has revised its Open Research Position Statement, reinforcing our commitment to rigour, integrity, and transparency in research behaviours, practices and outputs. 🔎 Read the statement: https://loom.ly/-W0LS6o

Black British Voices: Black British Collections. Cambridge University Library is forming a community panel of Black British & Black Northern Irish individuals to help shape its 2027 exhibition & events programme. 🗓️ Deadline: 14 Dec 2025 🔗More info: https://loom.ly/9lDrGVY

We hope you can join us this evening on Zoom to discuss The Tap Dancer by Andrew Barrow! Register your free place: loom.ly/PlR2sr0

Spot the typo on pg 20. #OTD 1859 Darwin's On The Origin of Species was published. It was corrected in the 2nd printing. This copy was given by Adam Sedgwick and includes his many notes and an inscription by the author. Digitised in full here: mss-cat.trin.cam.ac.uk/manuscripts/... #Darwin #typo

#OnThisDay in 1859, Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species was first published. Much of the original manuscript was used as scrap paper by Darwin's children. On the back of this painting of a house is an original manuscript page from Origin! #CambridgeUniversityLibrary (DAR 185)