Discover almost a million images of rare books, manuscripts, and other treasures from the Bodleian Libraries and Oxford college libraries.
About Digital Bodleian
Digital Bodleian first launched in 2015 with the aim of bringing together digitized content from the Bodleian Libraries’ extraordinary and rich collections into a single portal. The Bodleian Libraries have been digitizing content since the early 1990s and Digital Bodleian was and is designed to enable access to that content for the widest possible audience.
Digital Bodleian quickly established itself as a key resource for research and teaching based on Bodleian Libraries’ collections, and usage has steadily increased over the years since launch.
The site has relaunched, in late 2020, with a new and improved search and discovery interface, which aims to
Facilitate improved searching, filtering and browsing of collection items
Improve display of item-level metadata
Enable viewing and download of highest-quality resolution images for the purposes of non-commercial research and teaching
Improve curation and delivery of Bodleian Libraries content, as well as the delivery of content on behalf of partners such as Oxford’s colleges and Digital Humanities projects
The relaunched Digital Bodleian benefited from funding from the Oxford University GLAM Digital Strategy Implementation Programme, and the technical redevelopment was completed in partnership with text & bytes LLC.
Library collections
The Bodleian Libraries are committed to digitizing as many of our special collections holdings as possible, but the vastness of these holdings means that only a relatively small amount is available online. If you would like to explore our special collections further, there are a number of additional online resources available. These include the main library catalogue for print collections SOLO, where information about, for example, rare books can be found; Bodleian Archives & Manuscripts, which contains information about our post-1500 archival and manuscript collections; and numerous TEI catalogues, which contain records for our Western medieval and non-Western manuscript collections. Guidance on all of our available finding aids is provided by Weston Library Special Collections. If in doubt, please contact us.
Digital Bodleian also works in partnership with a number of Oxford colleges and Digital Humanities projects to deliver images of their collections. For more information about this service, please contact us.