The amount of different designs of these there are - the hours of time I've spent removing them from library holdings. Brass paperclips only please!

Just started my next @pharostutors.bsky.social course on apprenticeships. Not really a source I've used before, so looking forward to learning more.

Still pretty cold in Cambridge today but it's not reached 1963 levels yet. Not sure we'll be skating on the Cam this year! Here's what it looked like then.

Finally got round to watching Wake Up Dead Man yesterday - really enjoyed it, even if it was a slightly odd mash of UK and USA.

Well that's me done till after Christmas. Cambridge Central Library will be back open on Saturday 27th December at 10am, and the Cambridgeshire Collection will be staffed from Monday 29th December at 9:30am.

Bit quiet at work at the mo, so great time to check out our eMagazines and eNewspapers on Pressreader. You can even brush up on your foreign languages - I'm reading a DIY magazine in German at the mo. www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/residents/li...

It's been graverobbers, bodysnatchers and resurrection men all morning, something people were very concerned about in the 1820s and 1830s. Here's a cartoon about it in our collection.

Did enjoy the game at the Christmas party at work - what were we trying to make from library books?

It's the monthly #SaturdayLibrarian shift again today - last one of 2025! The Cambridgeshire Collection team are here till 5pm if you have a local history urge once you've finished the Christmas shopping.

Spent the morning filing in a grant application form. Here's what we want - a cheque! This is from Foster's Bank. The bank was originally in Trinity Street, where Jigsaw is now. Here's a picture from the 1890s.

Certainly starting to feel a bit like Christmas round here - just had someone drop off some mince pies. Here's Heffer's bookshop celebrating Christmas in the 1960s.

Had a new booklet in about the Cambridge Union Society today. However, did you know that it was one of the few buildings in the city centre to get bombed in WW2? You can still see shrapnel damage on Whewell's Court by the junction of Jesus Lane.

Off to the Museum of Technology tonight - giving a talk to the Cambridge Industrial Archaeology Group on Cambridgeshire Inventions. Think I'll end up teaching my grannie to suck eggs to be honest, but hopefully they enjoy themselves anyway! More deets at www.museumoftechnology.com/ciag

They've just updated the Google aerial map of Cambridge. May Balls visible around the place and Midsummer Fair is there too. I'm guessing the picture was taken on Wednesday 24th June.

Off to Huntingdon tomorrow to do a talk on Winter in the Fens. You can find out more at www.library.live/calendar/eng... Looking forward to trying out the new(ish) T1 bus route - was very impressed with the T5 route to Soham earlier this year.

Today's theme is people in hats. All of these are from our Ramsey and Muspratt collection and were taken in 1935 here in Cambridge.

Finishing off writing my talk on theatres and performing arts centres in Cambridgeshire with a bit on the Priory Centre in St Neots. Here's a picture of it in February this year before the works started.

It's St Andrew's Day today. We've got 22 churches in Cambridgeshire dedicated to St Andrew - no idea why so many! It also happens to be my birthday, so I usually use it as an excuse to eat Scottish tablet.

It's Black Friday today, so here's a photo of a coal merchant's waggon from the 1910s. It's William Benstead of Swaffham Prior with his son Clifford in Swaffham Prior. I don't know the name of the horse I'm afraid.

One of my highways colleagues has just come in with a folder of bits and bobs to donate, including lots of useful photographs of bridges. Here's Carter Bridge being built in 1989 between the hours of 1 and 6 in the morning on Sundays. It was the UK longest cycle and pedestrian bridge when it opened.

Been really enjoying the @queerhcn.org symposium online today - what a range of things people have been up to looking at LGBTQ+ history across museums and heritage #QHCN2025

Back at work again after a week off - did enjoy popping into the Barbican Library on a trip to London though. Not a proper day out unless you've poked through somebody else's library!

Had a good time at the launch of the Sam Motherwell exhibition on the third floor of Cambridge Central Library. It'll be up till Friday 19th December if you want to catch it yourself.

Off to the Friends Meeting House in Jesus Lane later to do a talk for a group. But did you know it was the first home of Cambridge Central Library? The library opened there for the first time on 28th June 1855, before moving to the back of the Guildhall in 1862 and into Lion Yard in 1975.

New donation today of negatives by Horace Jack Casselden, a photographer in Ely from the 1960s through to the 1980s. They've newly arrived on the library van from the Littleport Society and I'm looking forward to having a look through them.

It's my turn as the #SaturdayLibrarian this week and I headed over to Cherry Hinton Library this morning to give them a hand running our Virtual Reality experience sessions. Everybody really enjoyed themselves and it was a nice change to be able to walk to work!

We'll be having an exhibition of Sam Motherwell's art in Cambridge Central library - the launch is next week on Friday 14th Nov 3-4pm. More details at www.eventbrite.com/e/sam-mother... The exhibition itself will be up untill 19th December. You can see more about Sam at sammotherwell.weebly.com

Heads up - copy wills are going back to being expensive again, so get your requests in now. Lasting Power of Attorney fees are going up too, so a good time to get yours sorted out. todayswillsandprobate.co.uk/copy-probate...

The Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire Family History Society have very kindly paid for our new A3 negative scanner. IT are here to install it and I'm looking forward to giving it a go.

Heading out for a day in Wisbech - realised that now my commute is on an electric bus it feels really weird to feel the engine idling at bus stops

It's our quarterly team lunch today, so here's some pictures of the Cambridge Civic Restaurant, the post war version of the British Restaurant. Here's the inside in 1963 and a fire at the shoe shop opposite in 1970, but it does give you a good idea of where the Civic Restaurant was in Petty Cury.

It's rather windy today, so here's a couple of our windmill photographs. Here's a couple of our mills that still survived. We've got Wicken Mill on the left in 1892 and Fulbourn Mill on the right, in the 1930s.

I'm helping out with our sold out event about medicine tonight, so here's some Red Cross nurses. The ones with the cups is from the 1930s and we know very little about it, so if you recognise anybody do let me know! The other one is Whittlesford Red Cross Auxiliary Hospital in September 1916

We're off to Barrington today, to their cement works in the 1960s. It is famous for having the last standard gauge quarry railway, which ran until 2005. Barrington was the last cement working in Cambridgeshire before closing in 2008.

Academic dress is the topic today - here's Teddy Roosevelt in full rig at the honorary degree ceremony at Cambridge University in 1910. From left to right are the two esquire Bedells with their maces, Theodore Roosevelt, the Vice-Chancellor Canon Mason and the University Marshall in top hat.

One of these days I'm going to get my head around all the different nonconformist chapels in Cambridge and how they all split, combined and changed religions. Until then, here's pictures of Eden Street Baptist, now part of the Grafton Centre, and the Primitive Methodist Chapel on Newmarket Road

Threshing with traction engines is the theme today with two photos, one from Guilden Morden and the other from the Wilbrahams (not sure if it's Great or Little)

It's Cambridge bin ladies today - during the First World War women did lots of jobs that were previously men's work, including keeping the place clean and tidy. Here's Cambridge Corporation dust cart crew number 1 and number 6 with their uniforms and equipment.

On the way back from a very enjoyable trip to The National Archives with work. Great to see behind the scenes.

I'm back from my holiday, it's the monthly #SaturdayLibrarian shift and my colleague has just handed me my new favourite item, newly donated! Of course everybody needs a box of pub sign cocktail sticks for Cambridgeshire. Looks like from eBay that Whitbread did sets of these covering the country.

Managed to find Bournemouth Central Library yesterday. I was particularly impressed with the excellent local studies section. Also saw St Peter's church and the tomb of the Shelly family

Headed over to Bournemouth for a few days - you don't get beaches like this in Norfolk! Really enjoyed visiting the Russell-Cotes Museum yesterday as well.

Headed out yesterday in Storm Amy for the AGM of the local history society, but also nipped in to see the newly refurbished Rock Road Library. It was very busy indeed, hence no interior photographs, but it's looking very nice. Lovely new ceiling windows really brighten up the place.

We're having a drop in session sharing South Asian memories of the Second World War together with the Imperial War Museum on 14th October 1-5pm in our new Everyspace area on the third floor of Cambridge Central Library. See www.eventbrite.com/e/sharing-so... for more details and do spread the word!

I'm off to Soham tomorrow to talk about the history of transport in Cambridgeshire. It'll be 10-11am at Soham Library. Here's Soham Bapist Sunday School on an outing in 1923, with a steam traction engine pulling 5 waggons of children down the High Street.

The Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society are one of the best sources for Cambridgeshire archaeology and local history and they're available for free online at archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/library/brow...

It's all fairgrounds and amusements here today - have Billy Smart's circus elephants wandering through Cambridge.

One of the more interesting buildings in Cambridge you might not have heard of is Chesterton Tower - tucked away near St Andrew's Church. It's actually a house, built for a local officer for Vercelli Abbey in Italy, who owned the manor. Read more at capturingcambridge.org/chesterton-2...

Found one of the old Huntingdonshire County Library book plates today - bit more exciting than the modern logo

We had a fire drill at work yesterday, so here's a picture of Cambridge's new fire engine leaving the station in St Andrew's Street in 1920.