Social Science Library, Oxford

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Social Science Library, Oxford. Interior.

Old Boys School, former site of the Politics, International Relations and Sociology library.

The Social Science Library, Oxford (SSL) is the main teaching social sciences lending library at the University of Oxford, England. The library supports taught programmes for both undergraduates and postgraduates, and houses a dedicated research collection part of which contains legal deposit material out-housed from the Bodleian Library. The Social Science Library uses the Library of Congress classification scheme.

Subject coverage includes:

The library is located in the Manor Road Building on Manor Road, Oxford.

[edit] History

The Social Science Library officially opened 1st October 2004, following a period in which subject collections housed within smaller units were amalgamated into a central library site. The institution was preceded by the Social Studies Libraries; a grouping of three separate libraries:

Politics, International Relations, and Sociology Library (PIRS)
Economics Library (formerly the Institute of Economics and Statistics (IES) until 1999)
Social Policy and Social Work Library (SPSW)

These three libraries were the first to be combined, at the site of the existing Economics Library, between 2002 and 2003. Further integration followed with the Criminology Library and Socio-Legal Studies Library moving to the site in 2004. The collections housed at the International Development Centre (IDS) at Queen Elizabeth House joined the Social Science Library after its launch, in the summer of 2005. Material from the Slavonic and East European collections, previously kept within the Bodleian Library Slavonic reading room, also moved in to the library later that year.