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Research collections | Teaching collections | Special collections

Taylor Institution Library

The West European collections are held into two separate sections, the research collection in the Main Library and the teaching collection in the Modern Langauges Faculty Library. Both are housed in the Taylor Institution building on St Giles' and operate as a single library service.

The library specialises in the languages and literatures of Western Europe other than English, and also in Linguistics and Film Studies.

Research collections

The Taylorian Library's research collection, comprising approximately 500,000 volumes, is remarkable both for its content and range. Housed in a series of Reading Rooms and open-access stack areas, or off-site at the Nuneham Courtenay Repository, most of the stock is available immediately or can be delivered within 24 hours.

Senior members of the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages and graduate students have direct access to the stack and library staff will fetch books on request for undergraduates and other registered readers. Much of the stock is available for loan to resident members of the University.

Specialist library staff are on hand to assist readers and there are 100 reader seats, many providing wireless internet access for laptops. The Library's catalogue is available online as part of OLIS, the University's union catalogue.

Besides literary texts, often in numerous editions, good provision is made of critical studies, reference books, bibliographies, dictionaries, encyclopaedias, linguistic atlases, and memoirs. There are special sections on palaeography and on bibliography and the problems ancillary to foreign book production in the modern period. The periodicals stock of more than 860 printed titles, virtually all on open access, contains holdings of original literary journals from the eighteenth century onwards and, with numerous current subscriptions, the Library takes both critical journals and creative magazines right across its fields of interest.

Teaching collections

The teaching collections of the Modern Languages Faculty Library (ca. 80,000 volumes) are primarily intended for undergraduates studying Modern Languages at the University. The West European Film Studies collection is also housed here. Borrowing from these sections of the Library is restricted to matriculated students of the University.

Special collections

Some rare material is kept in closed stacks, either on site or at the Nuneham Courtenay Repository, and may be requested for consultation in the Main Reading Room. Please ask staff at the Enquiry Desk for details. 

In French, the Library is strong on novels, plays, and other texts from the 17th century on, and in the Voltaire Room it houses considerable holdings of that writer and of others of the French Enlightenment. Besides a small manuscript collection (including items by Flaubert, Gide, Sartre, Giono, as well as numerous autographs and letters), the Benjamin Constant collection is outstanding and holdings from the mid-19th century generally are notably strong.

Noteworthy special German collections include the Luther Flugschriften, the Fiedler collection containing much autographed material, books on the Goethezeit and on Anglo-German relations, and the GDR literature collection.

In Italian, the Dante and Futurist collections are of particular interest, and the Spanish collection is strong on literature of the Golden Age and of the 19th and 20th centuries. The Portuguese literature collection is unrivalled in the UK, while Latin American specialist authors include Borges and Neruda.