Mary Burgess

A person looking at Sam Motherwell's exhibition on the third floor of Cambridge Central Library.

Some of Sam Motherwell's sketch books laid out on a table

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.

I get this doing tours of our collection for kids and you have to explain what a photographic negative is because none of them have any idea.

A sketch of the Friends Meeting House in Jesus Lane while it was the Free Library. Free Library is written over the door.

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.

Petersfield, rough? The posh end of Mill Road?

A box of various types of negatives - boxes of glass plate negatives at the bottom, with safety film negatives in bags on top.

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.

Yeah, that would be lovely

Never have got the hang of making tablet. I'm making sure I never buy myself a sugar thermometer as otherwise I'd do nothing but make more of the stuff!

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!

It's been packed here in the Collection today - more people in then we've had in ages. Mr Green and his hot air balloon has been popular recently. He regularly ascended from land in Barnwell, often ending up rather far away, travelling 50 miles to Wellingborough on the Tuesday 19th May 1829.

Now do one on the differences between a library and an archive!

A pen and ink sketch of the junction of Mill Road and Kingston Street. Many people on bicycles are whizzing around.

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

A glass display cabinet on wheels

Here's ours - bought for us by Cambridge University Library so I don't know where from I'm afraid.

Yeah, you *can* open ours without, but it's not much fun (and ours is on wheels so if you're not careful you shove the whole thing over)

We've got a big suction cup handle for one of our glass cases too - always good fun getting it open and shut.

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...

Yes. I want it boiling ASAP and the kettle is fastest

An A3 flatbed negative scanner sitting on a desk.

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.

Peckover House at Wisbech. A Georgian house on North Brink owned by the National Trust

Made it as far as Peckover House - well worth a look round if you're in the area

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

The inside of the Civic Restaurant in 1963. The restaurant is empty, ready to open. There are many square tables laid out in rows, each with four chairs around. The crest of the Cambridge City Council is up on the wall.

A photograph taken out of the window of Fosters Bank looking down Petty Cury towards the Guildhall. On the far left you can see the outside of the Civic Restaurant. On the right are four fire engines and a firefighter on a ladder climbing into the shoe shop opposite. There are large crowds of people watching the firefighters standing on the pavement.

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 does. You want "The university mails of Oxford and Cambridge, 1490-1900 : early letters, college stamps and Victorian security marks" by Sigee. We've got a copy here in the Cambridgeshire Collection. I'm sure you could find a copy in Oxford somewhere.

A view across Wicken Fen to a windmill in the distance.

Fulbourn Mill, a smock mill. There's an avenue of trees either side and a mill stone leaning up against the mill itself.

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.

That's brilliant. Kinda tempted to get myself some.

A group of nurses from Whittlesford Auxillliary Hospital in September 1916. They're all wearing uniforms, mostly with a big red cross on their long white aprons. A range of white nurses hats are visible.

A group of five Red Cross nurses from the 1930s in uniform. Four silver prize cups are arranged on the floor in front of them.

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

Barrington cement works. There are large storage containers in the background on the right hand side and a carriage in the middle of the track. There's a bulk HGV being filled in the background.

Three large Eastwoods lorries with the three cement works chimneys in the back of the shot.

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.

Woof, wouldn't eat there if you paid me, never mind about how close it was.

A group of five men lined up at the honorary degree ceremony at Cambridge University in 1910. From left to right are the two esquire Bedells in suits, academic flat hats and academic gowns holding large silver maces (roughly 3 feet long); Theodore Roosevelt wearing the gown for an honorary Doctor of Laws degree; the Vice-Chancellor Canon Mason in vicar's robes with his academic gown and mortarboard and the University Marshall in top hat and overcoat holding another silver mace.

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.

I've been waiting for this to happen since they announced the new Archbish.

The original building of the Eden Street Chapel on the corner of Fitzroy Street in Cambridge, before it was combined into the Grafton Centre. It is now a branch of Gail's bakery.

The very large Primitive Methodist Chapel on Newmarket Road, which was later used as a furniture store by Peak's Removal company before being used as a nightclub and having a fire in the 1980s.

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

Yeah, always used to be the standard gag about trips to London, the black snot