6 | Facilities and Contacts

History and its joint schools are convened and administered by the Faculty of History. A list of useful contacts is shown below: if you are not sure who can help, please contact the History Undergraduate Office for advice (undergraduate.office@history.ox.ac.uk).

The Directors of Undergraduate Studies in History for 2024-25 are Dr. Ian Archer (ian.archer@history.ox.ac.uk) and Dr Lucy Wooding (lucy.wooding@history.ox.ac.uk).

Disability Contacts

The Disability Co-ordinator for undergraduate students is Alexandra Vickers – undergraduate.office@history.ox.ac.uk – she can help with all general enquiries. Students who need to record lectures or have a note-taker should also contact her. Students can also talk to Alex about the Disability Equality Committee if they would like something raised or discussed there.

Harassment Advisors

The History Faculty Harassment Advisors are Dr Sloan Mahone (sloan.mahone@history.ox.ac.uk), Dr Conrad Leyser (conrad.leyser@history.ox.ac.uk) and Dr Maria Misra (anna-maria.misra@keble.ox.ac.uk). Students are welcome to contact them for a confidential discussion about any concerns. Find out more about Harassment advice here.

Other useful History Faculty contacts

Places you need to locate are the History Faculty (map available here), the History Faculty Library in the Radcliffe Camera (map available here), and Examination Schools (map available here).

On occasion, some lectures or classes may be held elsewhere in the University. In these cases, students may wish to refer to the interactive map of the University, which is available at www.ox.ac.uk/visitors/map.

The location and accessibility of many University buildings are described in this online Access Guide: www.admin.ox.ac.uk/access/

If you have any concerns about accessibility, please contact the Disability Co-ordinator in the first instance.

As you will know by now, historians use many books. The availability of books is supremely important, and undergraduates are fortunate in having access to libraries and museums in Oxford of an unrivalled scale and variety. You will also need access to many online resources, especially for journal articles, but also for other kinds of historical sources and output, and Oxford also has a rich collection of these (see further 6.5).

We are prioritising the purchase of ebooks where possible for items on reading lists.

To search for books and journals, use Oxford’s discovery tool via SOLO http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk

Databases with full-text sources, such as historical newspapers, are accessed via: Databases A-Z https://libguides.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/az.php

The following libraries and museums are particularly useful to undergraduate historians:

There are several other specialized University libraries which undergraduate historians are encouraged to use for relevant books:

For more details and opening hours of individual libraries see https://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/libraries#/

Each college has its own library, for use by members of that college. These libraries contain good, sometimes excellent, history collections, maintained primarily (but not exclusively) for undergraduates. Access to and borrowing from college libraries is normally restricted to members of the college only. Opening hours are determined by colleges individually.

IT training

Students wishing to improve their IT skills are advised to look at the courses run by the IT Learning Centre: http://help.it.ox.ac.uk/courses/index

The Centre provide a wide variety of courses to help to improve your skills in Microsoft Services (Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc), as well as email etiquette, IT specific to Oxford and Teams to name a few. These take place both face-to-face and online. The University also provides self-service learning: Courses - Home | IT Learning Centre (ox.ac.uk)

The Faculty now organizes training and workshop sessions on electronic resources for first year students and for students preparing their theses. Support and training are available through the Bodleian History Faculty Library (HFL). Check out the HFL training schedule at: https://libguides.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/history/training and and https://canvas.ox.ac.uk/courses/4736.

For individual and advanced guidance, contact Rachel D’Arcy Brown, History Faculty Librarian (Teaching) (tel: (2)77264; e-mail: rachel.darcy-brown@bodleian.ox.ac.uk). She can arrange short courses for small groups at your request. You may find these of particular use in your second year when you will be embarking on independent research for your undergraduate thesis. 

IT training is provided by IT Services: an up-to-date list of courses can be found here: https://www.it.ox.ac.uk/do/training-and-facilities.

Students can also buy a range of discounted software from the IT Services shop (http://www.it.ox.ac.uk/want/shop/).

SOLO

You will be notified through your College of induction sessions run by the Bodleian Library which offer an introduction to SOLO. It is important to realise that SOLO is the catalogue for the major collections of the libraries of the University of Oxford. It incorporates the library holdings, including electronic resources, of all Bodleian Libraries and most College libraries, as well as the archive of past examination papers in the Exam Paper Archive.

Students should be aware of the extensive range of subscription databases and e-journals offered through Databases A-Z and SOLO available using your Single Sign-On account via http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk on PCs in College Libraries and Computing Rooms, the Bodleian History Faculty Library, and the Bodleian Library. You may also access Oxford e-resources and databases on your own device.

Among the most useful is the Bibliography of British and Irish History which indexes works on the history of Britain, Ireland, and the British Overseas. This database comprises 600,000 records (books, journal articles, and articles in books) searchable by subject matter and time period. Students may find it helpful for supplementing bibliographies on British history provided by tutors or for checking references to articles.

Other important networked resources for historians include the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Historical Abstracts (summaries of many articles searchable by subject as well as author), full-text newspapers, Early English Books Online, the Bodleian pre-1920 catalogue (for earlier works, and probably particularly useful for those thinking of writing dissertations), and Jisc Library Hub Discover (the union catalogue of over 100 UK libraries, including the British Library).

See https://libguides.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/history for guidance to the vast number of resources available.

If you want to use subscription resources off campus, login to SOLO/Databases A-Z using your Oxford Single Sign On details.

Students should find all the relevant course information on Canvas, the Faculty’s Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). https://canvas.ox.ac.uk/courses/22234. Canvas contains bibliographies for all courses on the syllabus. For some subjects, there are also links to electronic versions of the set texts.

Oxford University Computer Usage Rules and Etiquette

The attention of undergraduates is drawn to the Oxford University Computer Usage Rules and Etiquette, available on the University website at http://www.it.ox.ac.uk/rules. All users of IT and network facilities are bound by these rules.

Please also bear in mind the University’s guidance on participation in social media, which can be found at http://www.ox.ac.uk/students/life/it/socialmedia.

IT in the History Faculty Building

All teaching rooms and the Common Room in the History Faculty have wi-fi: students are encouraged to use Eduroam to log on.