Grand bookshop relaunch tomorrow!

By 7 pm this evening we decided the shop was as ready as it's ever going to be and staggered home, to be ready for an early start tomorrow. Our volunteers have repainted all the walls; put up extra shelving; shampooed the carpet; washed the windows; repaired the light fittings, then rationalised the book categories and filled the shelves with as much fresh stock as possible.

We'll probably still need to do a small amount of shifting around if the amounts allowed for the different    classes aren't yet quite right and some of the most interesting books are still in boxes that won't be accessible until we've completed the re-organisation of our basement stock-room. However there will still be lots of bargains and interest for book-addicts when we open tomorrow at 10 and the "hidden store" will gradually flow out onto the shop floor as we empty boxes.

Many thanks to former city MP Anne Campbell for agreeing to do the official opening and to everyone who worked so hard on the refurbishment or helped by loaning equipment or donating materials, including ASDA, Cutlacks, Halls of Cambridge, Cambridge Resale, Homebase, Lloyds TSB.

Special mention must go to Claire of ASDA's Community Life project who put in an enormous amount of work driving forward the renovation, and to Pat, Liz, Alison, Paul and Eileen who worked incredibly hard to get it done in the time available.

We still need your book donations!

Please keep donations of books, CDs, vinyl and DVDs coming: the interest of a shop like ours depends on a constant input of fresh items so that customers know it will always be worth their while to stop by and see what's new.

At the moment the bookshop is open from 10 am until 5 pm from Monday till Saturday (we'd very much like to recruit some extra volunteers to make it possible to open Sundays too).

Our current target is to increase our sales by £200 per week so that we can generate £1,000 profit which can be used to support our low-cost animal clinic.

Volunteers needed at our 2nd hand bookshop

Many thanks to the hard-working volunteers who've made it possible to open our bookshop at 188 Mill road for two extra days per week—so we can now keep on fundraising on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. We still need at least four more people so we can open on Monday and Tuesday, and ideally enough to try opening on Sundays as an experiment.

Mill road is never likely to become busy enough to generate enough income to employ paid staff and still make a profit to fund our animal welfare work (which, after all, is the reason for having a shop at all; there wouldn't be any point if it would actually raise more money if we closed it and I got a second job stacking shelves in Asda and donated the proceeds). However, because rents are low in comparison with more central areas, we can generate really useful funds on a "low input, low output" basis.

Books and CDs need proportionately less manual effort to prepare for sale than the more general charity shop stock, and it's relatively easy to run the shop using amateur enthusiasts. If you love books and reading, there's always something interesting to find among the day's donations.

Don't be daunted by the thought of having to learn to use the till; we arrange training either in the bookshop itself, or up at our main Burleigh Street shop, and there are also back-room tasks that need doing if you really feel it's not your thing.

If you might be interested in volunteering, please email info@rspca-cambridge.org.uk 

Bookshop looking festive

Apologies for the rather gloomy picture of Sharon; the light inside the shop isn't really bright enough for non-flash photos in late afternoon.

Many thanks to the volunteers who worked so hard decorating the shop: it looks wonderful.

Lots of cards and inexpensive gifts inside and enough books to tide the most addicted reader over the festive season.

Donated to our second hand bookshop

Catalogue of books printed in the fifteenth century now in the British Museum

The photo doesn't give much idea of how big the actual thing is—there are multiple volumes and each is huge. They're actually brownish rather than green, but I took the picture under fluorescent light and the colour of the photo is a bit odd.

Many thanks to the donor (who must have had quite a job getting it to the shop!).

Bookshop at 188 Mill Road re-opening with great offers for students

20% discount on production of student card. Lots of books and also great posters and prints to cheer up your room.

Bookshop closed for a week

Our 2nd hand bookshop at 188 Mill Road will be closed for a week from Monday 14th September for stock reorganisation. Re-opening Monday 21st September.

Science books at 188 Mill Road: continued

You can also browse and buy online (there are more books in the shop, so please call in as well if you are in Cambridge).

Science books at 188 Mill Road

In honour of Cambridge Science Festival, the RSPCA Bookshop is featuring a display of second-hand science books. We have some excellent bargains, including a copy of the classic Infant Chimpanzee and Human Child.

Post-Christmas clearouts?

Our charity shops at 188 Mill Road, Cambridge and 156 High Street, Newmarket are back in action after the break and can make good use of any unwanted presents or other saleable items you may be clearing out. The old retro/vintage clothing shop at 184 Mill Road is now closed, but clothing and bric-à-brac donations are still very useful to us at 188.

We will be saving any really good items for our new shop in central Cambridge and selling lower-value items at our jumble sales at the Mill Road Baptist church. There is still a fairly good market for textile items for recycling, so even worn or damaged clothing, curtains etc. can help our fundraising efforts.

Plans for the new year include increased online sales of books. This will mean some re-organisation of the basement stockroom at 188 because the books we list on the internet must be shelved in order so that they can be located easily when purchase requests come in. This is very important because failure to fulfill orders which have been placed means a negative mark against us and might cause us to be delisted as a seller.

Andrew's Christmas window display at the bookshop

Winterfair results

The tombola raised £117.20 and was sold out in only two hours. Many thanks to Nicola, Sharon, Michael and everyone else who helped or bought tickets. It was perishing cold, so the helpers probably wouldn't have wanted to put in very much longer, but next year we'll try to collect enough items to keep going for at least three hours.

At the other end of Mill Road, Sue was doing a brisk trade with her veggie hot dogs, but no final total yet.

This was the last day 184 will be trading as a specialist clothing boutique and for the rest of the runup to Xmas it will be operating as a "pound stop" selling off the items that aren't good enough to keep in store until the new premises near the Grafton Centre are up and running.

Please look in for lots of excellent bargains.

The secondhand bookshop at 188 will continue and is the place to visit if you're in need of holiday reading to tide you over the Christmas break. Xmas cards are now in, and we also stock cotton "long-life" carrier bags as part of the drive to make Mill Road a plastic carrier free area.