OxLibris: School sessions

Booking now closed

We are unable to run OxLibris library sessions during the 2020-21 school year because of restrictions to library capacity put in place as part of Covid-19 safety measures. If you would like more information about the scheme please contact oxlibris@admin.ox.ac.uk.

For more information about Bodleian Libraries visits for schools visit www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/whatson/learn/school-visits. 

Book a session

These sessions are open to Oxfordshire state schools.  They are designed for Year 12 and 13 students who need access to academic resources for A Level coursework in subjects like English and History or for EPQ research. We can offer sessions during the University vacation in July and September 2019.  Sessions are 2-3 hours long (so they usually fill a morning or an afternoon) and groups of up to 15 students plus an accompanying member of school staff can attend.

About the sessions

Sessions for school groups will be held in college libraries in Oxford.  Schools will be matched with a college based on when they’d like to visit and how many students they want to bring. 

All Oxford colleges have an academic library for their students.  Attending a session in a college library will allow students to explore a small academic collection, browsing the shelves for material and accessing electronic resources, with the support of library staff.

Each Oxford college, and its library, is different.  Most college libraries have at least 40,000 books as well as journals and magazines across a wide range of subject areas. 

During the session, students will be able to browse books on the shelves and use library study spaces to spend time reading relevant books.  They will also be able to take turns to search for online resources on the library's PCs (most libraries will have 2-4 PCs available to use).

Library staff will be on hand to help students find their way around the library and search for relevant books using our library catalogue, SOLO.

Before the session

We will do our best to match schools with a college library on a convenient time and date, and will then introduce the teacher to the college librarian so that you can be in touch directly to make arrangements for your visit.

We find that students make the most productive use of this opportunity when they already have a specific research topic; the session is an opportunity for them to find library resources, research independently and make notes for 2 or 3 hours. If possible, we ask teachers to send us a list of research topics in advance so we can check that the college library has relevant resources, because not all colleges teach every subject.

Please ask students to bring paper and pens to take notes. A camera or smartphone is also useful for taking pictures of relevant chapters or articles, within copyright limits. They can also bring a USB to save some digital resources, or send themselves resources to an email address. Students are welcome to bring laptops to take notes, but they won’t be able to connect to the college internet network.

Students who want to plan ahead can also search the library catalogue for books held in a specific college library before the session.  For more advice on how to do this, see the section on how to search for college library resources.