Special Collections

The majority of the special collections are kept in the Special Collections Reading Room which has the following opening hours: 

Semester hours

• Monday to Thursday 13.00 - 17.00
• Friday 13:00 - 16:30

Walk-in access is available to staff, students and holders of a Special Collections Reading Room pass.

• Monday to Friday 09.00 - 13.00

Access by prior appointment only. Email specialcollections@brookes.ac.uk to arrange your visit. Please state which collection(s) you are interested in using and an indication of when you would like to visit.

View semester dates.

Vacation hours

• Monday to Friday 09.00 - 17.00

Access by prior appointment only. Please email specialcollections@brookes.ac.uk to arrange your visit and state which collection(s) you are particularly interested in using and an indication of when you would like to visit.

A few of the collections are in the main Library building. The Library is open to Oxford Brookes staff and students with a Library card, and external users with ID. Please see the Library’s information for external users webpage for further information and opening times.

Email specialcollections@brookes.ac.uk or telephone +44 (0)1865 534700 if you have a question about any of the Special Collections or to arrange a visit outside of the semester walk in opening times.

The Special Collections reading room is in the basement of the John Henry Brookes Building on the Headington Campus, Gipsy Lane site. A campus plan and information about travelling to campus are available on the University’s campus webpage.

The Special Collections and Archive are open to anyone wishing to carry out research. Current staff and students must present a valid University ID card on each visit. External researchers must complete a Reading Room Registration Form  and provide ID on their first visit. We ask that members of the Institute of Brewing and Distilling also show proof of their IBD membership. A Reading Room pass will then be issued, which must be presented on all future visits.

Please note that visitors under the age of 18 must be accompanied by a responsible adult (i.e. parent/guardian/teacher), and a registration form must be completed by the accompanying adult.

An additional form must be completed by all researchers wishing to use the Booker Prize Archive.

All forms are also available in hardcopy in the Reading Room.

Visitors are bound by the Library Regulations and specific regulations relating to the use of Special Collections (see below) at Oxford Brookes University Library.

The Reading Room has a study area that seats up to twelve users at any one time. Access is provided to the Library Catalogue and the Archive Catalogue. For Brookes users there is also a networked PC. Users are welcome to bring in their own laptop and WiFi is available. If you are making handwritten notes please use a pencil.

Bags and coats cannot be taken into the study area - lockers and coat racks are provided for your convenience.

Reading Room Regulations and conditions of use

Use of Special Collections and Archives are governed by University Regulations for Study and Library Regulations with the following additions:

1. Access to the Special Collections Reading Room is allowed to all bona fide researchers. The University reserves the right to refuse admission without redress.
2. All readers must sign the visitor’s register on arrival and departure on each visit and show a valid staff or student card, or valid Special Collections Reading Room Pass. External researchers can apply for a Special Collections Reading Room Pass by completing a registration form and providing a valid form of identification.
3. No food or drink, including bottled water, is allowed in the Reading Room. Mobile phones must be switched off or in silent mode.
4. All bags must be left in the lockers provided. If you wish to consult books or other materials which are not from the Special Collections in the Reading Room, you must first show them to the member of staff on duty.
5. Books, journals, documents and other materials may not be removed from the Reading Room.
6. Writing in, marking, or harming in any way, any manuscript, book, journal or other item belonging to the collections is forbidden. Items should not be leaned upon, refolded, traced or marked in any way. Fragile material should be read with the book rests provided.
7. Readers are welcome to use their own laptop and use will be at their own risk.
8. All copying is undertaken by Library staff subject to copyright law and good preservation practice. Requests for copying should be made using the form(s) provided.
9. Researchers are permitted to take photographs of material held in Special Collections for private study or research that is not for a commercial purpose subject to copyright law. Photographs should be taken without a flash
10. Requests for Archive Room material must be made on the Archive Room Request Form supplied.

Download the regulations as a PDF.

Information about each of our collections is available on the collections webpages (see below). Staff are available to help you locate material and to advise on how best to handle items. You may browse the collections shelved in the Reading Room and there is no limit on how many items you may use at one time.

Please handle items with care when removing them from the shelves. Markers are supplied and should be placed where items have been removed. Once you have finished with an item, please leave it on the re-shelving trolley provided.

To request material to be fetched from the Archive Room, you will need to complete a request form for each item. You may consult four separate items or one archive box from the Archive Room at any one time.

Special Collections material is not available for borrowing. For researchers unable to visit the archives in person, we can offer virtual reading room appointments, which complement our copying service.

Special Collections’ users may take photographs (without flash) of items from the collections with their own devices for free.

Special Collections provides a staffed scanning service under the following conditions:

• The copy is being made for non-commercial or private study. Copying requests for commercial or publication purposes should be emailed to the Archivist.
• The item is suitable for scanning (i.e. size, fragility, binding).
• The extent of the copying is within legal limits.
• A Special Collections scanning form is completed.
  

Scans will be provided in unedited PDF format to the email address provided on the Special Collections scanning form. 

Reasonable scanning requests are free of charge for Brookes students. Other scanning is charged at £1 for 10 scans of published material and £1.20 for 10 scans of unpublished material.

A number of works from the Evelyn Dunbar collection are available to purchase as prints from the ArtUK online shop. 

When referencing an item from the archives you need to provide enough information to allow anyone reading your work to find the item again. To do this, you must include the Doc Ref and name of the archive (i.e. Oxford Brookes University Special Collections). It is also recommended that you include the title or a brief description of the item, the date of the item and the name of the collection it comes from. 

For example, the format could be:

Title, date, collection name, Doc Ref, archive name.

A worked example:

Letter from Angela Carter accepting her invitation to the award ceremony, 19 Oct 1983, Papers of the Booker Literary Prizes, BP/1/15/1/1, Oxford Brookes University Special Collections.

For further information on referencing archive material using Harvard style, see this blog post.

• Collections management policy PDF
• Volunteering and work experience policy PDF
• Loans request form PDF or Word document

Selected images from our collections are included on the Special Collections webpages and on RADAR. Sometimes it is not possible to trace the copyright owner(s) of these images. If you are the rights holder for any of the content we have included on these sites, please contact us regarding permissions by emailing specialcollections@brookes.ac.uk.