New at the Dye Garden: a Tetrapanax papyrifer, known as a 'pith paper plant' 🌿 Once the stems are mature enough, the inner pith can be used to make paper! Thank you to Harry Metcalf, Paper Conservator at the @fitzmuseum.bsky.social, for the donation.

Last day to have your say! Everyone has the chance to win one of ten £50 Love Cambridge gift vouchers – and students could also win an iPad Air. Take the survey for your chance to win: www.lib.cam.ac.uk/survey (Open to everyone who uses any of our libraries, in-person or online.)

We're delighted to share that University of Cambridge Libraries and Archives have joined the Open Journals Collective! They are one of our founding members, and their support is hugely important to us. We look forward to working with them as we build a brighter future for academic publishing!

Congratulations to Professor Orietta Da Rold, Academic Director of the University Library Research Institute, who has been awarded the University's Pilkington Prize for excellence in teaching. 👏 🔎Find out more: https://loom.ly/qz3otVA

Living Water: Poetry, Art and the Fight for Clean Rivers, is open! Explore the work and legacy of artist Barrie Cooke, and his remarkable creative friendship with poets Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes. 🎟️ FREE 📍Cambridge University Library & @pembroke1347.bsky.social 🔎 https://loom.ly/64SyJug

We’re recruiting two Security Assistants. You’ll be part of the team welcoming visitors to the library, whilst also protecting the treasures in our collections. We’re looking for people with great customer service skills who love working in a team. Apply before 6 April: https://loom.ly/oM85fLU

An extraordinary herbarium containing almost 300 pressed plants is now available to explore online. It has been digitised with support from the Isaac Newton Trust and Trinity College, Cambridge. Edward Hanmer’s Herbarium (MS Add.10547): https://loom.ly/J1Zj8OM @camdiglib.bsky.social

Last chance to have your say and hopefully win big! Open to everyone who uses University of Cambridge library spaces and resources, in person or online. Take 10 minutes, easy tick box questions (optional text fields to tell us more). Survey closes this Friday (27 March): https://loom.ly/6AjsqAI

Today is the Spring Equinox, which marks the start of astronomical spring. 📖 A spring image in 'The Quiver of Love: A Collection of Valentines Ancient and Modern', drawings by Walter Crane and Kate Greenaway, 1876 (Waddleton C.9.1133).

Living Water: Poetry, Art and the Fight for Clean Rivers – now open! 📷Dr Mark Wormald, curator of Living Water, Fellow in English at Pembroke College and award-winning poet. 🔎 Find out more: https://loom.ly/48X86bY 🎟️ FREE entry 📍Cambridge University Library and Pembroke College

Living Water: Poetry, Art and the Fight for Clean Rivers, opens this Friday 20 March at Cambridge University Library. 🎟️ FREE entry 📍Cambridge University Library and @pembroke1347.bsky.social 🔎 Find out more: https://loom.ly/48X86bY #LivingWater

Living Water: Poetry, Art and the Fight for Clean Rivers, opens this Friday 20 March at Cambridge University Library. 🎟️ FREE entry 📍Cambridge University Library and @pembroke1347.bsky.social 🔎 Find out more: https://loom.ly/48X86bY #LivingWater

There are still a few tickets left for the launch of Living Water tomorrow night! loom.ly/FSLQWrg

Students could win an iPad Air and everyone has the chance to win one of ten £50 Love Cambridge gift vouchers. Survey open to everyone who uses University of Cambridge library spaces, services and resources, in-person or online. All University libraries included. https://loom.ly/6AjsqAI

Trial access is available for members of the University of Cambridge & readers @theul.bsky.social to Social History Archive - Historical Records until 22nd May 2026. Further details are available on our blog post - ejournalscambridge.wordpress.com/2026/03/17/s...

Trial access is available to members of the University of Cambridge & readers @theul.bsky.social to British Diplomacy from the Unification of Germany to the Spanish Civil War, 1863–1939 until 17th April 2026. See our blog post for further details- ejournalscambridge.wordpress.com/2026/03/17/b...

This month's #ReallyPopularBookclub choice is The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. We'll be discussing the book with special guest Samantha Ellis, playwright and author. Join us online, everyone is welcome! 📖 31 March ⏰7pm to 8pm 📍Online 🎟️ FREE tickets: https://loom.ly/2de5Yj4#ReallyPopularBookclub #WomensHistoryMonth

🍀Happy St Patrick’s Day! 🍀 📜 Here is St Patrick preaching, from a miscellany of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, containing a selection of historical texts, from Bury St Edmunds Abbey (CUL MS Ff.1.27 Part II). 🔗See this manuscript in the @camdiglib.bsky.social: https://loom.ly/joTgwvE

As a former Cambridge University Libraries and Archives Syndicate member, Chris is well known to many in our network and we send our hearty congratulations!

Rue-leaved saxifrage for the #WhiteFlowers challenge, a Poppy and Greater celandine back in flower outside @theul.bsky.social, and Red dead nettle. #WildflowerHour

Join us at the CRASSH Connections event 'Language, Ethics, and Society: Voices from research and AI' Listen to talks by two leading experts & connect with researchers, students, and professionals from across disciplines 19 March 12.30-2.30pm, Alison Richard Building, CB3 9DP https://bit.ly/4bkWZ78

Buzzing after a day of presentations about potentialities of AI & cultural heritage by AI for Cultural Heritage Hub (ArCH), a collaborative project led by @theul.bsky.social Research Institute and other partners. Especially enjoyed hearing about decolonial efforts @scottpolar.bsky.social

📣 Calling All Cambridge Climate and Nature Researchers Submit your proposal to participate in the Cambridge Climate and Nature Research Showcase 2026. 🔗 https://bit.ly/4u3kaeI #CamShowcase26 #ClimateNatureShowcase26

A pleasure to host a @camglamresearch.bsky.social workshop yesterday @theul.bsky.social on ‘Discovering pressed plants in books and how to care for them’, led by @annalsvensson.bsky.social.

Hoping to see Herb Paris in the wild again this year. This one’s from Sowerby’s ‘Botany’ (1790). CCC.47.54 @theulspeccoll.bsky.social @theul.bsky.social

Just got word that our book is now available from Blackwell's, with shipping to the US, UK, and EU. It's been quite a faff getting them to list it and I don't know how long before they're out of stock again: blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/pro... @meloniesch.bsky.social @theul.bsky.social

📢Applications are open for a new fully funded PhD studentship: 🦋‘Recording nature and writing the self: time, entomology and the archive in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’. ⏳Application deadline: 3 May 2026 🔎More info: https://loom.ly/MO5pMMM

We've collaborated with @zoologymuseum.bsky.social to explore the use of AI to unlock its collections. 🔎 https://loom.ly/bXo7Xpk 📷Grace Kinney-Broderick, who assisted the @ai.cam.ac.uk funded project, alongside her PhD.

The Spinning House Project records around 6,000 women imprisoned by Cambridge University in the 19th Century. This project is being worked on by @theul.bsky.social & CHFHS and highlights more ways that history punished women without evidence or trial. #Genealogy www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

🏆 Become a Data Champion at the University of Cambridge! Passionate about good research data practices? Learn more and share knowledge to help support researchers with research data management and publishing research outputs. ⏰Apply by 31 March 2026. 🔗 https://loom.ly/JyoKs8Q

Fully funded PhD studentship: ‘Recording nature and writing the self: time, entomology and the archive in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’. Closes 3 May. With Ruth Abbott, Staffan Müller-Wille, Ed Turner & me. @theul.bsky.social @zoologymuseum.bsky.social www.ccc.cam.ac.uk/initiatives/...

Lovely to be able to share this 18th-century bound herbarium for a workshop on botany and the book, funded by the Isaac Newton Trust and Trinity College, Cambridge. We’ve also digitised the volumes, so everyone can take a look! cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-...

#ThenandNow at the UL The North corridor in 1934 and 2026. Can you spot any changes?

A fabulous couple of days @theul.bsky.social and @cuherb.bsky.social, with lots of archives and blossoms - two of my favourite things!

Always good to see this when I’m in Ely: the tomb of Bishop John Moore (1646-1714), whose great collection of rare books and manuscripts - perhaps the greatest English private library of the 17c - was purchased for George I and presented to @theul.bsky.social as The Royal Library.

Speak up for the chance to win prizes! Students could win an iPad Air and everyone could win one of ten £50 Love Cambridge gift vouchers. Survey is open to everyone who uses our libraries, resources and services, in-person or online. Survey open now: https://loom.ly/eK5MWvI

📅 Saturday 21 March | 4:00–6:15pm 📍 Cambridge Central Library Join Cambridge University Library & Cambridgeshire Libraries for a FREE screening of How to Build a Library (2025) and hear about CUL’s new project Black British Voices x Black British Collections. Book now: https://loom.ly/eUSKonE

Very happy to be sharing the pages of Ghosts and Scholars 50 with @helengrantsays.bsky.social! My story The Trojan Revenge is inspired by a medieval book of recipes in @theul.bsky.social that also inspired M. R. James's 'The Experiment' - MS Dd.11.45, if you're feeling brave...

As part of the AI for Cultural Heritage Hub project (ArCH), @theul.bsky.social has been collaborating with @zoologymuseum.bsky.social to explore the use of AI to unlock its collections. Read more about this in our latest blog: specialcollections-blog.lib.cam.ac.uk?p=31537

Today on #IWD we honour Amy Levy, Jewish poet, novelist, essayist, and Cambridge Alumna. 🔎Levy's Archive at the UL: https://loom.ly/RHh3bbc#IWD With thanks to @thefnl.bsky.social, Arts Council England, Rothschild Foundation, T. S. Eliot Foundation.

Join us for the launch event of our new exhibition, Living Water: Poetry, Art and the Fight for Clean Rivers! 🛶 📅THURSDAY 19 MARCH 2026 🕖 7.30PM to 9PM 📍the UL 🎟️Book your free ticket: https://loom.ly/FSLQWrg Booking in advance is required. Under 18s must be accompanied by an adult.

Daffodils on the lawn, and daffodils in the collections 🌼 Spring has sprung at the UL, inside and out. 🌸📚 From our shelves: Flowers from Shakespeare’s Garden, illustrated by Walter Crane (1906.9.385).

Happy #WorldBookDay! 📚 What books did you love as a child? This #NationalYearofReading, pass that magic on and encourage a child you know to #GoAllIn with a book. Image of a child reading is a book illustration by Jessie Willcox Smith, (1908.12.11).

New Special Collections blog: Endometriosis & Menstrual Health in Special Collections. Ethan Sheard, Senior Library Assistant at the Seeley Library, takes a look at rare books and manuscripts that illustrate menstrual health throughout the ages. 🔗https://loom.ly/WC0LLAM #WomensHistoryMonth

🔎 Rare 18th-century punches used to create the original Baskerville typeface have been digitised and released online. Designers, historians and the wider public now have the opportunity to study the physical tools that shaped modern typography. 🔗https://loom.ly/1ulLaFI

Have your say for the chance to win prizes – takes 10 minutes! The survey is open to anyone who uses our libraries and services. Students have the chance to win an iPad Air and everyone could win one of ten £50 Love Cambridge gift vouchers. Survey open now: https://loom.ly/eK5MWvI

It's #InternationalPolarBearDay 🐻‍❄️ This handsome bear decorates a 1649 map of the Arctic Pole and surrounding lands, engraved in Amsterdam by Dutch cartographer Johannes Janssonius (1588–1664). Shelfmark: Maps.bb.17.F.20.

All my colleagues @theul.bsky.social are cool, obviously, but some are super cool 👇

📝 The Research Skills Training Programme from University of Cambridge Libraries and Archives is open for bookings! 👋 Designed primarily for PhD students and researchers, the sessions are open to all Cambridge staff and students. 🔎Learn more and book: https://loom.ly/RjU6dj4