Humanities Library

The last date for borrowing items from the English Faculty Library, History of Medicine Library, Music Faculty Library, Philosophy and Theology Faculties Library and film collections is Friday 4 July.

Any books borrowed between Monday 16 June – Friday 4 July will be due back on Tuesday 14 October 2025 (Tuesday of Week 1).

No borrowing will be available until the Humanities Library opens.

Items held offsite can be requested to any other open library and – if these are borrowable items – they can be borrowed as normal.

If you need to return a book borrowed from the English Faculty Library, History of Medicine Library, Music Faculty Library, Philosophy and Theology Faculties Library and film collections during the summer vacation, please use the drop box at the Philosophy & Theology Faculties Library.

Find the drop box at Radcliffe Humanities, Woodstock Road, OX2 6GG

If you have an urgent need during the closure, please contact your subject librarian or subject library.

We will endeavour to respond to your request as quickly as we can.

Please note that as we prepare and move into the new library we may be slower to respond than normal.

You can please continue to request new items during this time.

We will contact you if the item arrives during the closure period and let you know how you can consult or borrow it.

We are asking tutors and course convenors to submit reading lists as far in advance as possible.

This will be a busy time for us and we may not be able to turn reading lists around quickly. 

The library is planned to be fully open and staffed seven days a week 9am – 9pm. Part of the library will also be available for students to use 24/7 as a study space.

There will be over 100,000 books in the library along with about 12,000 bound volumes or boxes of loose music scores and about 13,500 CDs/DVDs. Subjects covered will include:

• English language and literature
• film studies
• history of medicine
• internet studies
• music
• philosophy
• theology

Nearly all of the scores currently on the open shelves of the Music Faculty Library will be moved to the new library.

A Multimedia Reading Room will house CDs and DVDs in music and film studies with equipment to play these ‘heritage’ formats. We expect there to be about 13,500 CDs/DVDs on the open shelves.

CDs and DVDs held in offsite storage in the Collections Storage Facility can be requested to the library.

In addition to the other facilities in the library and Schwarzman Centre, graduates will have access to four dedicated graduate study spaces.

On each of the two main floors of the library, there will be a 32-seater graduate study room (with a mix of open tables and individual screened study desks) and an 8-seater study/meeting/seminar room, with a meeting table and AV/Teams facility.

It will be possible for graduates to book the 8-seater rooms in advance.

There will be further graduate study spaces in the Centre, both in Faculty hubs and in shared space.

The rare book collection currently held in the English Faculty Library has been transferred to the Collections Storage Facility, which has ideal storage conditions.

You will be able to request these items for teaching in either the Humanities Library or the Weston Library.