Special Collections

The 1611 benefaction

The Library began with 1,100 books given in 1611 by the Academy’s second Rector, recorded in a benefaction book that is still kept in the Treasury. About 860 of the original volumes survive, mostly law, divinity and classics, many with the notes of the Academy’s first teachers.

The Academy’s records

The University’s own archive, from the letters patent of 1583 to the present: statutes, accounts, registers of students, the minutes of Council and Senate, and the records of the Treasury. Records less than thirty years old are closed, except where the law requires otherwise.

The Pontar Ballad Collection

About 9,300 printed broadside ballads, from 1580 to 1900, many of them printed on Printer’s Row and sold on the quays and the ferry. The collection is one of the largest of its kind, and was the basis of Fifty Years of Ballads and Bargains (Oxenfurt University Press, 2019).

Papers of the University’s teachers

The Library collects the papers of members of the University, especially in philosophy, where the collection now covers several generations of the Faculty. Papers of living members are deposited on terms they agree with the Library, and are often closed for a period.

The Computer-Assisted Learning Unit

The 1,412 teaching programs written by the University’s Computer-Assisted Learning Unit between 1979 and 1996, preserved with the Lazarus archive since 1998 and catalogued in full in October 2026. Most can be run in the reading-room emulator. Digital preservation and Lazarus

Using Special Collections

The Special Collections reading room on the first floor of the Old Library is open from 09:30 to 16:30, Monday to Friday. Please order items at least two working days ahead. Items from the Treasury are brought up twice a day, at 10:00 and 14:00.

Enquiries: special.collections@oxenfurt.uk