Reading lists

Your reading list will give you the details of books, chapters, journal articles and other material that your tutor would like you to read. Reading lists are provided by your college tutor or course convenor. They may be provided electronically via Canvas, Weblearn or ORLO.

Oxford Reading Lists Online (ORLO)

ORLO is the reading list system for the University of Oxford. With ORLO, you can access up-to-date reading lists at any time from a range of devices, check live location and availability information for the print items on your reading list and access many e-books and article easily through the ‘View Online’ button. You can add your reading intentions and personal notes directly onto a reading list item, which means ORLO will save you time.

If you are a student, you can search for your reading list on ORLO or access ORLO lists via your course's Canvas site. If your course is not on ORLO, please speak to your subject librarian or email orlo@bodleian.ox.ac.uk so that staff can look into this.

Top tips for using ORLO

Add to My Lists

Use the ‘+MyLists’ button to save a list to your profile. Saved lists will always be available to you under the My Lists tab, even after it has been archived at the end of the academic year.

Assign reading intentions

Add your reading intentions to plan what you will read and mark your progress. Click on the circle to the far right of an item and choose from five intentions.

Export

Select ‘View & Export’ button at the top of the list, for different export options. Choose RIS for import to reference managers or PDF-List to save a copy of the list.

Filtering

Use the drop-down filter options at the top of the reading list to only display items that are essential or recommended, physical or online or to filter by your reading intentions.

Report broken links

Staff work hard to ensure that the ‘View Online’ button links are kept up to date. However, these can sometimes require an extra login or may not load correctly. If you encounter this issue, please make sure you are still logged into ORLO with your SSO. You can also try clearing the cache and cookies in your browser. Visit this guide for further details on how to do this.

If the ‘View Online’ button is still not working, click the three dots on the far right of the reading list item and select ‘Report broken link’. Please provide your University email address so that staff can notify you as soon as the link has been fixed.

View other formats/editions

Click on the title of a book to look at its details, including print availability. Look up alternative editions in SOLO by clicking ‘View other formats/editions’ under availability.
 
Please watch the video below for further guidance on how to access and use ORLO.

https://ox.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Embed.aspx?id=1f3f1f90-832a-4321-adc3-abb2009b01a6&autoplay=false&offerviewer=true&showtitle=true&showbrand=false&start=0&interactivity=all

 

Department, faculty and college ORLO lists are created and managed by administrators, academics and University staff. In order to receive list publisher permissions, you will need to attend an ORLO list creation iSkills training session or have read through the self-help information provided. The slides and materials for the iSkills training sessions can be downloaded from our staff ORLO LibGuide.

To receive a template ORLO reading list, get technical support on creating reading lists or to request permissions, please email olishelp@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.