Oriental Collections Central Bodleian

Institution Details
Description of Collections
Collections held in Oriental Collections Central Bodleian
Subjects and Material Types
Management Information
Catalogue Information

Institution Details

Oriental Collections Central Bodleian

Printed guides

Location in the UK

London & South East

Description of Collections

Scope

The current acquisitions of the Department of Oriental Collections largely reflect the teaching and research undertaken in the University in Hebrew, Islamic, South Asian and Far Eastern studies, and important collections are also maintained in areas such as Central Asia, Southeast Asia and Tibet.

The Department comprises six libraries on five separate sites, with holdings of some 500,000 volumes, and over 20,000 manuscripts predominantly in the languages of Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. Many of its collections are of international importance, attracting scholars world-wide. Each seperate site has its own description, and the focus here is on the oriental collections held on the Central Bodleian site.

History & development

The Library has acquired oriental printed books and manuscripts since the early years of its refoundation and opening in 1602 by Sir Thomas Bodley, himself a Hebraist. The earliest oriental accession, a manuscript Koran, dates from 1604. When Sir Thomas Bodley died in 1613, the Library possessed 49 fascicules of books in Chinese, a figure unlikely to have been matched at this time by any other library in Europe. The main foundations of the important Islamic manuscript collection were laid in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Hebrew collection was developed mainly from the nineteenth century, starting with the acquisition of the Oppenheimer collection in 1829. Sanskrit was represented in the Library's collections as early as 1666, but again the South Asian collections have been largely developed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The main development of the Chinese collections occured from 1881. Armenian items were acquired from the seventeenth century and from 1910, the Wardrop collection of material relating to Georgia and the Caucasus was formed. Small but significant collections of materials relating to Central Asia, Tibet and the Himalayas, Korea and South East Asia have been acquired largely since 1800.

User focus

The Department of Oriental Collections of the Bodleian Library aims to satisfy the present and future research and teaching needs of the staff and students of the University and to make its resources available to the wider national and international scholarly community.

Collections held in Oriental Collections Central Bodleian

Subjects and Material Types

Regions

Central Asia and the Caucasus, East Asia, Near & Middle East and North Africa, South Asia.

Countries

Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, Hong Kong, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Macao, Mongolia, Morocco, Nepal, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Syria, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Tibet, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Yemen.

Languages of material

Amharic, Arabic, Aramaic, Azerbaijani, Bashkir, Bengali, Buriat, Chinese, Chuvash, Coptic, Egyptian (Ancient), Geez, German, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Japanese, Kara-Kalpak, Kashmiri, Kazakh, Kirghiz, Korean, Ladino, Manchu, Marathi, Mongolian, Nepali, Ossetian; Ossetic, Pali, Panjabi, Persian, Prakrit languages, Pushto, Russian, Sanskrit, Syriac, Tajik, Tamil, Tatar, Telugu, Tibetan, Tigre, Tigrinya, Turkish, Turkish, Ottoman (1500-1928), Turkmen, Uighur, Urdu, Uzbek, Yakut, Yiddish.

Subjects

Agriculture, Anthropology, Archaeology, Arts, Communication and media, Development, Economics, Education, Environmental sciences, Geography, History, Human rights, Industries, International relations, Language, Law, Literature, Medicine, Music, Philosophy, Politics and government, Recreation, Religion, Science and technology, Sociology, Travel, Women.

Languages as linguistic focus

Amharic, Arabic, Aramaic, Azerbaijani, Bashkir, Chinese, Chuvash, Coptic, Egyptian (Ancient), Geez, Hebrew, Kara-Kalpak, Kazakh, Kirghiz, Korean, Ladino, Manchu, Mongolian, Ossetian; Ossetic, Persian, Syriac, Tajik, Tatar, Tibetan, Tigre, Tigrinya, Turkish, Turkish, Ottoman (1500-1928), Turkmen, Uighur, Uzbek, Yakut, Yiddish.

Material types

Archival materials (includes non-published & mixed material), Audio materials (includes cassettes & CDs), Books, Manuscripts, Maps (includes all types of cartographic material), Music (only includes printed & manuscript music), Newspapers (includes microfilm editions), Serials, Theses.

Management Information

The collection is being actively developed, and the average intake has stayed the same.

Content date range

527 BC to present

Catalogue Information

Catalogue

All the Department's printed book collections with the exception of Chinese and Japanese are being catalogued in OLIS (Oxford Libraries' Information Service), currently in romanisation only. The CJK allegro catalogues are in original script. Although retrospective automation of the card catalogues is proceeding rapidly in most subject areas, substantial quantities of records continue to exist in card form only in all the Department's constituent libraries. For further details, please consult their individual pages. A large number of printed catalogues of the Department's rare printed books and manuscripts have been produced both by the librarians of the day and external scholars (see link below).