Are you looking to enhance your CV with paid business experience at a global publisher? Gale, an international leader in digital archives and library resources, is offering an exciting opportunity for students to become Gale Student Ambassadors for the 2025-26 academic year.
As a Gale Student Ambassador, you will help raise awareness about Gale’s fascinating archives, which include full collections of newspapers like The Times, The Telegraph, the Daily Mail, and The Economist, as well as specialised archives like Eighteenth Century Collections Online and the Archives of Sexuality and Gender.
Why Apply?
Paid Business Experience: Earn £750 while working directly with a global publisher.
Marketing Skills: Run your own marketing campaigns, refining copy and images for successful social media use.
Public Speaking: Gain valuable public speaking experience by conducting presentations and training sessions for your peers.
Published Work: Feature your work on Gale’s company blog, providing shareable evidence of your contributions.
Networking: Connect with university staff, fellow students, and professionals at Gale, both locally and internationally.
Research Skills: Enhance your research abilities and discover primary sources to improve your essays and grades.
Application Deadline: 1 July 2025
Don’t miss this chance to boost your career prospects and gain unique experiences. Interested? Click the link below for more information and to apply.
We are delighted to run the History Thesis Fair for second-year undergraduates this year on Wednesday 30 April, 3-5pm at the Examination Schools (North Writing School).
The Fair is aimed at 2nd year history undergraduates embarking on their thesis research and who are looking to explorethewealth of research source material available for their field of study.
It is the ideal opportunity to learn about resources you may not yet have considered for your undergraduate thesis, andto connect with librarians, archivists, researchers, and collection curators who can guide you towards relevant material or useful finding tools. You can also speak to other students who have previously written dissertations and learn about their TOP 10 TIPS.
30 stalls will cover many areas:
Topical stalls, e.g.
Biography
Disability History
Legal History
LGBTQ+, Gender and Sexuality
History of Science & Medicine
Maps and Mapping
Medieval History
Oral History
Visual Culture
and more
Special Collections, libraries and archives, e.g.
Archives and Manuscripts 1500-1800
Archives and Modern Manuscripts 1800-
College Libraries (Special Collections)
College Archives
Digital primary source providers: Gale Primary Sources, AM – Adam Matthew Digital
Early Printed Books
Oxford Brookes University Special Collections & Archives
Oxfordshire History Centre
Printed Ephemera (John Johnson Collection)
UK Government and International Intergovernmental Publications
Geographical stalls, e.g.
Africa & Commonwealth
East Asia & South Asia
Eastern Europe and Russia
Great Britain & Western Europe
Middle East, Hebrew & Judaica, Caucasus & Central Asia
Latin America
United States
Plus, at our Information Skills stall, learn what courses are laid on to help you develop the research and referencing skills you will need.
The format of the Fair encourages you to explore and discover new materials at your own pace, to be curious, to network and to make connections to experts and your peers.
Accessibility
The main entrance to the Examination Schools is stepped. There is a ramped entrance immediately to the left of the main entrance. There is lift access throughout the building, two wheelchair accessible toilets and hearing support systems that can be deployed where needed throughout the building. Most areas of the building have level access.
The accessible toilet is gender neutral and is at the bottom of the staircase opp. Room 8.
Working on your thesis means that you will need to learn new or improve existing research skills, including:
Effective searching for information;
Awareness of the rich sources available in Oxford (and beyond) and how to access them;
Ability to correctly handle physical source material, such as archives;
Correct citation practices, ethical research practice, etc.;
Awareness of the relevant experts in Oxford libraries and archives.
The Bodleian Libraries have many classes and workshops set up to help you learn the skills you need – check out the research training page on this Libguide:
We are almost at the end of Hilary Term and so the History Faculty Library will be moving into the vacation loan period. From today – Monday 10th March (8th week), all books issued from the library won’t need to be returned until Tuesday 29th April (1st week, Trinity).
This also applies to any online renewals of current loans that take place from Monday 10th onwards. However, if there is a hold request on a book you have, it will need to be brought back by the original due date.
As always, you can check due dates and renew books through your SOLO account. And if you have any questions please come and speak to staff in the Radcliffe Camera or drop us an email at library.history@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.
On the last Friday of November (29th Nov 2024), the LGBTQ+ History Hackathon was held at the History Faculty. Co-hosted by Faculty academics and the History Faculty Library, over 70 people (students, staff, and members of the public) participated, both in person and online. The aim of the event was to crowdsource resources for a new Oxford resource guide for LGBTQ+ history. It very much followed the model of the Disability History Hackathon, held two years ago, which was a great success and provided resources for the disability history LibGuide.
Welcome to event in lecture theatre – Professor Martin Conway (Chair of the Board of the Faculty of History) and Isabel Holowaty (Deputy Head of Humanities Libraries and Bodleian History Librarian Research).
The event was opened in the Faculty lecture theatre by Prof. Martin Conway, Chair of the Faculty Board. After introductions, an outline of the scope of the proposed LibGuide, and a brief presentation on Bodleian Libraries Academic Library Services’ EDI activities by Helen Worrell, participants were shown useful advanced Google searching techniques by Rachel D’Arcy-Brown, History Librarian (Teaching). Participants then spread out across various rooms in the faculty, and began searching the internet to find relevant resources. In total, almost 500 resources were recommended, covering a wide range of topics and a variety of historical periods. These resources included journal articles, archives, and newspapers. This is a really fantastic result, representing a great effort on the part of all who got involved.
The event closed with a presentation of a snapshot of initial results by Zac Draysey, History Faculty Library Graduate Trainee, and final remarks and thanks by Prof. Matthew Cook, Jonathan Cooper Chair of the History of Sexuality.
The Hackathon provided a fun and inclusive way of amassing quality resources. It enables us to draw on the interests and expertise of a diverse group of people from Oxford but, thanks to technology, also from people across the UK and even North America. This will allow us to add a broad range of resources to the LibGuide.
The next steps will involve assessing and organising the recommended resources collected during the hackathon and create an easy-to-use guide, which places this wealth of high-quality information into a helpful context. This LibGuide will be accessible not only to University students and staff, but to anyone all over the world. In this spirit, the Hackathon focused on publicly available and open access material.
Our current plan is to launch a beta version of the LibGuide by June 2025, in time for pride month. Updates and further information will be posted here on the blog, as well on the Hackathon page itself.
Enormous thanks go to all participants for giving to freely their time and effort. Thanks also go to the History Faculty for hosting the event, sponsoring refreshments, and to their staff for supporting its organisation.
The Radcliffe Camera (incl. History Faculty Library) will be holding welcome tours for new students during 0th Week and 1st Week. The tours will introduce you to the library spaces and services, and talk in a little more detail about the collections in the Camera and Gladstone Link, particularly the collections of the History Faculty Library.
The tours will take place at the times below. No booking is required and the meeting point will be in the Lower Camera reading room on the ground floor. Just ask staff to direct you should you need help.
As we come to the end of Michaelmas Term, the History Faculty Library will be moving into the vacation loan period. From Monday 27th November (8th week), all books issued from the library won’t need to be returned until Tuesday 16th January (1st week, Hilary).
This also applies to any renewals of current loans that take place from Monday 27th onwards. However, if there is a hold request on a book you have, it will need to be brought back by the original due date.
As always, you can check due dates and renew books through your SOLO account. And if you have any questions please come and speak to staff in the Radcliffe Camera or drop us an email at library.history@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.
With the end of term fast approaching, readers are advised that HFL borrowing for the summer will begin on Wednesday 21st June. Please note, this is in 9th Week due to the History of the British Isles assessment that takes place during the preceding week. From this date onwards HFL borrowing limits will increase to 30 items (short loans inclusive), with a due date of Monday 9th October. Wishing you all the best of luck in the coming weeks!
To mark Disability History month, 24 volunteers assembled in the History Faculty on a cold and grey last day of term with an additional 12 joining the event via Teams. The mission? To find quality websites for a Bodleian Libraries’ guide on disability history resources. Prof Rob Iliffe opened the event by thanking all for contributing to the Faculty’s commitment to foster teaching and research in disability history.
Photo by Rachel D’Arcy Brown
After lunch and a handy crash course on advanced Google searching by Bethan Jenkins, students, researchers, librarians, and staff from the University’s Disability Advisory Service (DAS) settled down with their laptops to surf the web. Individuals were given broad topics to focus on. In just under two hours, an astonishing 226 resources were recorded, covering all periods and forms of disability. This is a fantastic achievement by the volunteer hackers and more than we could have hoped for.
The History Faculty Library trainee, Alice Shepherd, will next design a user-friendly version of the guide and add helpful contextual information. When completed at some point in 2023, the guide will be open to anybody in the world who is interested in disability history and looking for research resources. Watch this space!
Photo by Helen Young
As an event format, this jointly organised hybrid hackathon was a great success and will be a template for similar initiatives in the future. It used an inclusive, accessible, and collaborative approach to crowdsource quality resources for research and the public good. And it was fun! There may have been cake in between and drinks at the end for the survivors….
Our thanks and gratitude also go to the History Faculty and their staff for supporting the event in many ways, and to all the library and DAS staff who helped with the organisation and delivery of the event.
Dr Sloan Mahone, History Faculty & Isabel Holowaty, Bodleian Libraries
Welcome tours to the Radcliffe Camera (including the History Faculty Library) are now available for undergraduates and taught postgraduate students to book.
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