This page is intended for Undergraduates, Graduates and Researchers studying History at the University of Oxford, although students and researchers from related fields may find it useful.
Use this page to find out about information skills resources and courses relevant to History and allied fields. These may be courses offered locally or outside Oxford, most notably the Institute of Historical Research (more), The British Library (more) or The National Archives TNA (more).
History students and research can make use of a wide range of information skills courses, workshops and events.
Radcliffe Camera staff offer tailored courses and events to historians at various times of the year. They include:
This programme is designed to help you to make effective use of scholarly materials. We cover
The Institure of Historical Research, London (IHR) offers high-quality research training programmes to historians.
Each year they run an extensive programme of training in historical research skills for professional historians, independent researchers, and early career scholars.
Courses vary in length from one day to one term, and cover a variety of subjects from language learning to digital research practices.
Have you just started your PhD? The British Library's Doctoral Open Days are a chance for you to discover the British Library.
Learn about the extent of the Collection: manuscripts, archives, books, maps, visual art, sound recordings, newspapers, zines, stamps, official publications, journals, databases, websites … and more! Spanning over 3,500 years of history, drawn from across the world and covering hundreds of languages, the Library’s Collection is an essential research resource, unique in its size, variety and potential to support scholarship across a wide range of different disciplines and subject areas.
The National Archives offers a variety of training for students and researchers (Postgraduate Archival Training Skills - PAST)
See their website for further details and sign up to their newletter to receive information about upcoming PAST sessions.
The University's Language Centre has a lot to offer for historians wishing to upgrade their language skills or, quite simply, start learning a language. There are a variety of regular Languages for All courses for all skill ranges.
They also have a lending library encouraging self-learning with a lot of language learning resources for 180 languages, including books and CDs, a very nice film collection and satellite television available in several languages. They also encourage online learning.
And finally, they have a successful language exchange programme which allows you to speak with native speakers.
IT Services offers a great range of courses which are useful to historians. These include managing images or using Word effectively for your dissertation.
Students and researchers also have access to Self-service learning which is a huge library of online, video based, courses covering a wide range of software and IT related topics.
If you would like a one-to-one session to get help on any aspect of library resources and tools (SOLO, databases, ejournals, etc.) and generally get advice and tips for locating sources for British and Western European history or History of Medicine, Technology & Science, then sign up for a 1-1 session.
Students: email the History Librarian (Teaching);
Reseachers & DPhil: email the History Librarian (Research).
You can find details of Bodleian Libraries' subject specialists online for other areas.
A huge range of online tutorials and videos are available to support self-teaching in GIS. 
There are tutorials for ArcGIS Desktop and QGIS.
More assistance in learning how to find, use or create maps is available from staff in the Bodleian Library's Map Department.
