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Monday 9:30am - 5pm Tuesday 9:30am - 5pm Wednesday 9:30am - 5pm Thursday 9:30am - 5pm Friday 9:30am - 5pm

Oxford Union Society Library

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Oxford Union Society Library

Website: https://oxford-union.org/the-library/
Email: [email protected]

The Library and Archives of the Oxford Union Society. 'Like' or follow to keep up with events, opening times, and info on our collections, buildings and Union history.

04/06/2026

We are excited to have loads of new postcards for sale in the library reception! Our twenty-one new designs of postcard include ultra high-quality details of the Pre-Raphaelite murals and ceiling (courtesy of the V&A Museum), as well as historical photographs and architectural designs of the Union buildings and rooms. Postcards remain 50p each with one free for every ten purchased.

19/05/2026

The things one finds in the library! This beautiful unsigned watercolour of the Old Library was discovered left on one of the desks. If this was by you, please let us know!

12/05/2026

‘Oh! How the family affections combat / Within this heart; and each hour flings a bomb at / My burning soul; neither from owl nor from bat / Can peace be gained, until I clasp my wombat!’ – Dante Gabriel Rossetti

We are pleased to introduce our new colleague, Top the Wombat, who is already hard at work welcoming visitors to the Library. The library has a bizarre connection to wombats: Dante Rossetti, one of the painters of our Pre-Raphaelite murals, was obsessed with the animals, and procured one as a pet in 1869. He named it ‘Top’ after his nickname for William Morris: ‘Topsy’. Rossetti’s interest was known to the other Pre-Raphaelite painters when they were painting the Old Library in 1857, with Valentine Prinsep remarking that ‘to us...wombats were the most beautiful of God’s creatures’.

The library has accrued some wombat apocrypha: that the painters amused themselves by painting wombats into their murals before covering them over, and that historically service dogs were allowed into the room only under the pretence that they were ‘large wombats’!

30/04/2026

The sun is out - as are the deck chairs! Which means that you can now relax in the shadow of our majestic library...

28/04/2026

With exam season imminent, the Library will be running supervised study sessions using the pomodoro timer method for members who would like quiet, structured revision time. This consists of strictly programmed study and rest periods designed to aid in retention and manage mental fatigue.

The sessions will run from 10:00-12:00, Tuesdays and Thursdays in the Morris Room from Second to Eighth week. Participants will be supervised by a member of the Library Team who will operate the timer while carrying on with their usual work. Depending on feedback, the Tuesday session will initially consist of a shorter cycle (25 minutes study, 5 minutes break) and the Thursday session of a longer cycle (45 minutes study, 15 minutes break). No prior booking is required and light refreshments will be provided! Please note that the sessions will be open to Union members only.

24/04/2026

A reminder that we are entering Trinity Term next week, so will switch back to term time library hours: Monday to Friday, 09:30-19:00 and Saturday, 11:00-17:00. On Sundays the library will be closed.

24/03/2026

On this day in 1834, William Morris was born. Morris was one of the original painters who contributed to our famous murals, but additionally designed both the first and second iterations of our ceiling in 1857 and 1878 respectively. While the second iteration seen here shows a classic Morris foliage pattern, the first was apparently a depiction of scenes from Oxford life completed in the style of an illuminated medieval bestiary. Excitingly, our condition assessment last summer suggested that the bright colours of the original are still intact beneath the current decoration!

13/03/2026

Tomorrow we return to Vacation opening hours for the easter break: Monday to Friday, 09:30-17:00, and closed at weekends. Please note that the Union will be entirely closed from 27th March to 6th April, as well as on 14th and 19th March!

17/02/2026

Did you see our video on our eighteenth-century volume 'Oxonia Illustrata' last week? If you didn't, you will have missed the wonderful vignettes which engraver David Loggan peppered throughout his work, which give the impression of busy Oxford life in otherwise quite technical engravings of the Oxford colleges and halls. It's safe to say that geese have changed very little since 1714!

10/02/2026

At a mere two hundred years old, the Oxford Union Library is relatively young by Oxford standards, and most of our historical collections date from Victorian times. However, you may be surprised to learn that we do have a number of much older items collected or donated by members over the years. In this video, we look at our copy of David Loggan's sumptuously engraved 'Oxonia Illustrata' from around 1714. Many thanks to New College Library and Archives, Oxford and St Edmund Hall Library for their assistance in research for this video.

Address

Oxford Union Society Library, Frewin Court
Oxford
OX13JB

Opening Hours

Monday	9:30am - 5pm
Tuesday	9:30am - 5pm
Wednesday	9:30am - 5pm
Thursday	9:30am - 5pm
Friday	9:30am - 5pm

Website

https://oxford-union.org/the-library/, https://oxfordunionlibrary.org/

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