Here are a number of library related things to keep in mind as you prepare to finish your degree and leave Oxford.
Please return your books to the library from which you originally borrowed them. Find out the SSL’s opening hours on our webpage.
If you have lost an item borrowed from one of the Bodleian Libraries, contact the library from which the item was borrowed with the author’s name, the title of the book, the shelfmark (if possible) and your name and email address.
If the book is not found, you will usually be required to pay a lost book charge.
If you have already been invoiced for a book you have lost, please pay the amount before you leave.
We would be pleased to receive personal copies of social sciences textbooks that are in reasonable condition and cited on reading lists. We would add these to our lending stock so future students benefit from increased provision.
In cases where we don’t have sufficient space to add donations to our collections, we send them on to a charitable non-profit organisation.
Please pass any donations to staff at our Issue Desk.
Any unused credit on your PCAS account cannot be refunded and so we urge you to use it before you leave Oxford. On request, credit can be transferred to another PCAS account. Please email PCAS Support for assistance.
As a graduate of the University of Oxford you are entitled to apply for a Bodleian Reader Card (this is different to your “My Oxford” Alumni card). This card will grant you reference access to the Bodleian Libraries. Details on how to apply are on the University of Oxford degree holders applying for a Bodleian Reader card webpage.
Graduates can register for a “My Oxford” Alumni card. This will provide you with a range of benefits and discounts.
Being an Oxford Alum entitles you to remote access to selected electronic resources. More information can be found on the Alumni Journals access webpage.
If you have a Bodleian reader card, you will also be able to access electronic resources in the Bodleian Libraries via reader PCs.
If you have a RefWorks account, you will be able to continue to use RefWorks once you have left the University. However, you need to ensure you sign in with a personal email address to continue using the service as alumni. If you currently use your single sign (SSO) to log in to RefWorks, please read the information on the Bodleian Libraries Reference Management Guide..
If you are returning for another Oxford degree course next academic year, you can apply for a returning student card from Bodleian Admissions to retain access to the Bodleian Libraries and borrow books in the gap between your courses.
Build your confidence with the Bodleian iSkills programme, a series of free workshops that empower students, researchers, and staff at the University of Oxford to develop essential skills in discovering, critically evaluating, managing, presenting and sharing information in an evolving digital and physical world.
Workshops taking place in 7th Week Trinity Term
Zotero for referencing
🗓️ Monday 8 June | 🕘 13.30-15.00 | 💻 Online Looking for an easier way to collect, manage, and cite references? In this session you’ll be introduced to Zotero — a tool that helps you organize references and add in-text citations, footnotes, and bibliographies to your documents.
Managing research data and Data Management Planning (DMPs)
🗓️ Friday 12 June | 🕘 10.00-11.30 | 💻 Online Take control of your research data! Find out how to manage, store, and share it effectively, understand Oxford’s data policy, and make the most of the support on offer.
Using AI to find, analyse and share information sources
🗓️ Friday 12 June | 🕘 11.00-13.30 |📍IT Services Designed for those new to AI, this practical session will allow you to independently experiment with three GenAI tools and participate in group discussions to explore their strengths and limitations.
To view a full list of this terms workshops go to the Bodleian iSkills website or take a look at the iSkills term card for Trinity 2026 below. All workshops must be booked in advance via the Bodleian iSkills website.
Today is World Environment Day (5th June), led by the United Nations Environment Programme and hosted this year by Azerbaijan. This year’s theme is climate action, and you can learn more about this year’s campaign at: https://www.worldenvironmentday.global/2026/about/2026-campaign
To mark the occasion, we’ve put together a selection of books held at the Bodleian Libraries on the topic of climate change and climate action – please see below. There are mix of print books and ebooks.
It’s not that radical: climate action to transform our world by Mikaela Loach
https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/9gb1d2/alma991026790613807026
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From crisis to action: climate change through the eyes of the most vulnerable by Abena Takyiwaa Asamoah-Okyere, Christina Natalia Widjaja and Tim Smedley
https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/9gb1d2/alma991027415997307026
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The Climate Majority Project: setting the stage for a mainstream, urgent climate movement edited by Rupert Read, Liam Kavanagh and Rosie Bell
https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/1hmurok/alma991025465806707026
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Climate action (ebook) by Charles Sabel, David G. Victor, Alyssa Battistoni et al
https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/rl48sd/alma991027368983907026
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Psychology of collective climate action (ebook) by Karen Hamann, Eva Junge, Paula Blumenschein et al
https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/permalink/44OXF_INST/9gb1d2/alma991027286437907026
Our library entrance area will be fully refurbished over the Summer Vacation 2026, to include:
Please note that we will be closed to readers during August and September 2026 to facilitate building works but we will continue to offer key services. Full details on these interim services will be posted in due course.
If you have any questions or concerns, do speak to a member of library space or contact us via email.
Here’s a sneak peek at the Architects’ drawings …
Happy Pride Month from the SSL! To celebrate, our latest pop-up book display showcases the cultural movements and lived experiences of LGBT+ communities throughout the world.
We’ve included a range of books, from cultural works 100 Queer Poems and David Bowie Made me Gay, to the memoirs A Dutiful Boy and Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, and books on activism such as Inside the circle : queer culture and activism in Northwest China and We can do better than this : 35 voices on the future of LGBTQ+ rights.
You’ll find the book display around the corner from our Issue Desk. Please feel free to browse the titles, some books are for library use only and others can be borrowed (by University card holders). All have a bookmark in them to tell you which are which.
To learn more about Pride month and the events happening around Oxford, visit the Oxford Pride website: Oxford Pride UK
FT.com is the digital platform of the Financial Times, offering expert coverage of global business, economics and financial frameworks through award-winning journalism, analysis and commentary. Access is available free of charge to University of Oxford students, faculty, and researchers via the Bodleian Libraries’ institutional subscription.
This webinar, led by FT.com specialists, will provide an overview of the platform and showcase features designed to support analysis and teaching. The session will include tailored recommendations for faculty and researchers in Business and Economics, with practical guidance on using FT.com to enhance coursework, classroom discussion and independent research. This will include a review of new features and tools such as:
There will be an opportunity to discuss development of course and research content and attendees who are librarians, course convenors or staff members will be particularly welcome.
By the end of the session you will be able to:
This Webinar, aimed at Oxford University researchers and staff, will take place online via Teams on Monday 8 June, 2pm – 3pm.
Sign up to attend via the iSkills Workshops booking page.
Each month we choose an electronic resource which we feel will be of interest to you.
Our Resource of the Month for June is The Cold War: Global Perspectives on East-West Tensions, 1945-1991.
During the Cold War America’s CIA ran the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), in order to collate, transcribe and translate news sources from countries seen to be hostile to the U.S. The FBIS enabled U.S. secret agents to follow events and discussions within the Soviet Union, for example, in addition to China, North Vietnam, Iran, and North Korea. The Cold War: Global Perspectives on East-West Tensions 1945 – 1991 offers English translations of key news sources from these countries, published throughout the Cold War.
This resource can be accessed via SOLO. A Single-Sign-On (SSO) is required to access the resource remotely, as access is restricted to Oxford University students and staff members.
The SSL ‘Book of the Month’ feature highlights a book in our collection. This may be a recent addition to our stock or an existing item that we would like to share with you.
The Wild West of Eastern Europe: A Ukrainian Guide on Breaking Free from Empire
Pavlo Kazarin, translated by Dominique Hoffman with Andriy Kononenko, with an introduction by Dominique Hoffman.
Hannover, Stuttgart: Ibidem Verlag, 2024
Pavlo Kazarin was born and lived in Crimea until October 2014: he was one child of the many immigrants arriving in Crimea during its ‘golden age’ in the 1970s and 80s. He remembers a society that longed for this golden age to return – a society that preferred the Soviet past to a Ukrainian future. In February 2014 the Russian soldiers arrived; Crimea was officially annexed by the Russian Federation in March 2014. As Kazarin describes, Russia offered to resurrect its Imperial past. The Wild West of Eastern Europe is an account of his own conversion towards building a Ukrainian future after 2014 – as Ukraine itself came to understand its determination to defend this future.
The Wild West of Eastern Europe was published in Ukrainian in early 2022, just before the Russian full-scale invasion on February 24. By this time Kazarin had become a broadcast journalist in Kyiv: he found himself catapulted into his first live news broadcast that morning, as the Russians attacked. He joined the Ukrainian army the following day, and continues to serve as an officer. The Wild West of Eastern Europe therefore is a valuable exploration of the Russian war against Ukraine that preceded the full-scale invasion, and its consequences. Ironically one of these consequences was a growing awareness among Ukrainians of their commitment to resist Russia’s attempts to draw their country back into its Empire.
Kazarin’s account demonstrates particularly clearly the destructive power of the universal human impulse to hide from unpleasant truths. As it shows, people living in the east of Ukraine had first-hand experience of Russia’s aggressive intentions before February 2022; they were forced to confront a truth that politicians and citizens in countries further to the west had the luxury of being able to deny. As Kazarin says, “The phrase “time will tell” only applies to very large time scales. It only works when the person evaluating events has no stake in that evaluation” (p. 246). The Wild West of Eastern Europe shows that the sustained, systematic effort to uncover truth is essential to human flourishing.
The Wild West of Eastern Europe won a BBC News Ukraine Book Award in 2022.
https://www.bbc.com/mediacentre/2022/bbc-ukraine-book-awards-2022-winners-revealed , accessed at 13.55 on 28/05/2026.
You can currently find this book around the corner from our Issue Desk, above our New Books display. The book has been ordered up from Bodleian Offsite Storage for our display and is currently for library use only.
What would your SSL Book of the Month be? Do you have a favourite book in our collection? If so, we would love to know what it is. Add a comment below or email us.
Are there any books you would like us to order for the library?
Friday 19 June is the last date for book recommendations this financial year.
You can recommend a book title to the SSL by:
Book ordering will begin again in the new financial year, from 1 August 2026 onwards.
