The Bodleian Library

The Bodleian Library is one of the world’s icons of learning, sought out not only by the University’s students and academics, but by visitors from around the globe.

The main research library of the University of Oxford and the second largest library in the UK (after the British Library), the Bodleian Library has more than nine million volumes, housed on 120 miles of shelving, almost 30 reading rooms, and 2,500 spaces for readers. Here you will find most books published in the UK since the beginning of the seventeenth century. As one of the UK’s six ‘deposit’ libraries, the Bodleian has been entitled to a copy of every book and periodical published in the UK and Ireland since 1610.

Founded in 1602 by Sir Thomas Bodley, a Fellow of Merton College who carried out diplomatic missions for Queen Elizabeth I, the Bodleian is home not only to books but also to many rare manuscripts and curiosities that have been donated over the years.