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.
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.
Our library entrance area will be fully refurbished over the Summer Vacation 2026, to include:
A welcoming and accessible entrance
Two new Group Study Rooms
A new zone of informal study space
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 staff or contact us via email.
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.
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:
‘Ask FT’ for AI based topic exploration and discovery
‘MyFT’ for personalised content tracking
Curated newsletters for latest insights
Article annotation as a methodological aid
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:
Create an account with FT.Com
Make use of new features such as MyFT
Understand how AI is shaping access to the insights provided
maximise benefots to courses and research
This Webinar, aimed at Oxford University researchers and staff, will take place online via Teams on Monday 8 June, 2pm – 3pm.
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 – 1991offers English translations of key news sources from these countries, published throughout the Cold War.
Where can you access the resource
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
Book Overview
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.
Reviews
The Wild West of Eastern Europe won a BBC News Ukraine Book Award in 2022.
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.
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.
Logistics of open scholarship 🗓️ Tuesday 26 May | 🕘 14.30-16.00 | 💻 Online This session covers researching, publishing, and finding open scholarship resources and tools at Oxford.
Wednesday 27 May
Keeping up to date with research🗓️ Wednesday 27 May | 🕘 10.30-12.00 | 💻 Online Discover how to use alerts to stay up to date with new research, with guided instruction and hands-on setup of tailored email alerts.
Thursday 28 May
RefWorks for referencing 🗓️ Thursday 28 May | 🕘 09.30-11.30 | 💻 Online Join us for this interactive session in which we introduce RefWorks, a subscription reference management tool that University of Oxford members can use for free during their time at the university and as alumni.
Newspapers and other online news sources from the 17th-21st centuries 🗓️ Thursday 28 May | 🕘 11.30-13.00 | 💻 Online Understand the value of using newspapers in your research and learn effective search techniques when consulting historical and contemporary newspapers from across the world.
Friday 29 May
EndNote for referencing🗓️ Friday 29 May | 🕘 10.00-12.00 | 💻 Online Want to effectively manage your references? Join this session to discover how EndNote can help you collect, organise, and cite your sources with ease.
This week marks the launch of our new Fairtrade Book Display. In support of the University’s ambitious sustainability goals many departments are scrutinising their resource use and supply chains in pursuit of lowering carbon footprints and energy demand. Beyond just analysing these metrics, achieving sustainability also means considering the impact of resources we use on the places and people we import them from. The Fairtrade movement aims to address the economic impacts, attempting to foster fairer prices, safer working conditions, and other benefits for producers and farmers. Similar movements include the Rainforest Alliance, ETP (formerly Ethical Tea Partnership), and the Soil Association which each have their own focuses on nurturing sustainability across the world’s supply chains.
Many of the books we have chosen feature recognisable everyday Fairtrade mascots such as bananas and coffee, but we have also chosen books featuring less-obvious resources that the Fairtrade movement is concerned with like gold and diamonds.
Some books featured in the display are loanable books from the SSL’s own collection and can be borrowed as usual. Others are for use in the library only and cannot be borrowed. Do feel free to remove them from the display to look at in the library and then return them there afterwards. Each book has its own bookmark indicating whether it can be borrowed or not.
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