South of the Old Bodleian is the Radcliffe Camera. It has a particularly impressive selection of medieval manuscripts, 17th-century literary and historical documents, antiquarian and topographical manuscripts, collections from the Commonwealth and African countries, as well as digital material, including the university archives for the University of Oxford. The items range in date from papyri of the 3rd century B.C., to correspondence and papers of the present.

The Bodleian Library’s Special Collections (at the Weston Library) holds the second largest collection of manuscripts and archives in Britain, next only to the British Library in London. Whether you visit an exhibition or a display, attend an event or a lecture, go on a guided tour, or visit the shop, you will find an opportunity to discover the distinguished collections, magnificent buildings, and informative programs. The Bodleian Library is host to wide-ranging activities. There are five reading rooms in the Old Bodleian Library and Radcliffe Camera, and the underground Gladstone Link, another reading space, connects the two buildings. Access is not limited to anyone, and tours are organised regularly to visit the library.

To many Oxford scholars, the library is known simply as ‘Bodley’ or ‘the Bod.’ These resources are used by students and scholars from all over the world, and attract an ever-increasing number of visitors. The principal University library – the Bodleian, which has been a legal deposit library for 400 years, and 30 libraries across Oxford, together hold more than 12 million printed items, over 80,000 e-journals, and outstanding special collections of rare books and manuscripts, classical papyri, maps, music, and art. The Bodleian at the University of Oxford is the largest university library system in the United Kingdom. The group includes research libraries, faculty libraries, as well as those attached to the departments and other institutions of the University, and of course, the main University library. The main research library which lends the entire group its name is the Bodleian Library.

Oxford’s libraries are among the most celebrated in the world for their incomparable collections of books and manuscripts. See the 3D image of the Bodleian coffer on Cabinet, here.The interior of Duke Humfrey’s library, part of the Bodleian group at Oxford (Oxford Palaeography and Manuscripts Studies Seminar) ‘Newly acquired medieval book coffers at the Bodleian and the John Rylands Libraries’ See blogpost with downloadable foldable ‘fragments’ and links to facsimiles Kathryn James, Curator for Early Modern Books and Manuscripts at Yale’s Beinecke Library Sarah Wheale, Head of Rare Books at the Bodleian Libraries Matthew Shaw, Librarian of The Queen’s College, Oxford Henrike Lähnemann, Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford (Oxford Seminar in the History of the Book) The Queen’s College Sammelband with Myles Coverdale’s Goostly Psalmes’, with a showing of The Queen’s College copy and the Bodleian and Beinecke Library fragments ‘Translating, Singing, Printing the Reformation. In the style of a potluck meal, each institution brings a copy or a witness to the online gathering which fills out the whole intellectual smörgåsbord. Using this technology and adapting seminar formats to online presentation, at the Bodleian Libraries Centre for the Study of the Book we have found new opportunities to participate in cross-institutional events in 2021, sharing collection material with other libraries via online platforms and learning from their expert staff and unique items. Online meeting platforms and visualizers (the modern version of that classroom standby, the overhead projector) lend themselves to the visual exploration and discussion of related items, collections, or genres of material held in institutions that are geographically distant. The lockdown period has also been an opportunity to explore what can be done in new ways and even to push beyond the usual patterns of scholarly discourse. What about special collections libraries, whose materials cannot be taken out of the institution? Temporary closures or limited access to reading rooms have meant a pivot towards more provision of digital resources, and archivists and librarians have been active in unearthing treasures to share on social media. Public and university libraries have faced the pandemic with a multitude of inventive new ways of connecting books and readers, such as ‘Grab and Go’ book deliveries limiting the time of physical visits.

Bodleian library rare books