Library
The Wolfson Library treasures the traditional values of Oxford College life, while its modern architecture gives it a distinctive ability to pursue a modern agenda. The motto, Nova et Vetera (the New and the Old), reflects this.
St Catherine’s College Library is an architecturally brave building that offers spaces for quiet reflection and thought, while also encouraging students to be socially and academically adventurous. With its 16,000 books and modern resources, it actively contributes to the atmosphere of openness and friendliness that greatly affirms the College’s primary mission: the pursuit of academic excellence and the equal advancement of creative thinking, learning, education, and research in the arts and sciences.
Please note that the Library is closed due to RAAC-related works. To ensure access to resources and study spaces, the College has established a temporary Library containing 10% of the collection, covering all course needs. You can find out more about these spaces below.
Temporary Library
While our original Jacobsen-designed Wolfson Library is closed, a Temporary Library is open within the JCR Marquee. This space has been available to students since Michaelmas Term 2024.
Opening times
Term Time (from 6th October 2025):
Monday to Friday, 9am – 9pm
Saturday and Sunday, 9am – 5pm
Vacations:
Monday to Friday, 9am – 5pm
You can use the Temporary Library to:
- browse the shelves,
- use one of the 4 desks to study (up to 7 readers each),
- collect your books from the book collection point via Click and collect on SOLO
- borrow and return books at the issue desk
- Browse the Magazines trolley
- Take any FREE books from our free books trolley – including unwanted donations (with donor consent), and books withdrawn from the shelves (e.g. older editions, damaged books)
New books are constantly being added to the College Library, at the recommendation of both Tutors and students, and from undergraduate and graduate reading lists.
A separate College Law Library houses law reports and journals.
We’d love to hear your recommendations! You can email the Librarians directly at library@stcatz.ox.ac.uk. Alternatively, you can email your tutors and ask them to forward relevant book details to us.
Additional Study Spaces
The study spaces previously listed here are currently unavailable due to the Library closure and related works. The Raptakos Room will be available to students during Michaelmas Term 2025. Information regarding the reopening of other study spaces will be provided as soon as it becomes available.
We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause, and thank you for your understanding.
St Catherine's College Permanent Library (currently closed)
The Library is maintained for the primary use of undergraduates, and aims to acquire core texts for all undergraduate and graduate courses taught at the College.
All books in the Library are included in the electronic catalogue (SOLO), which in turn forms part of the wider Oxford University Libraries network.
The Library is wired for access to electronic resources and the Internet. There are three computer terminals. This includes two catalogue PCs, a high-quality photocopy/scanner/printer machine in the Library foyer, and wireless connectivity for laptop users.
Special Collections (currently unavailable)
The Wolfson Library, established in 1964, houses a collection of approximately 800 antiquarian books. These are located on the library’s ground floor and in Room A of the Bernard Sunley Building .
These reference-only books, which are primarily donations to the Delegacy of Unattached Students and St Catherine’s Society prior to the college’s foundation in the 1960s (with some later donations mainly from alumni in the 1980s and 1990s), are fully catalogued and accessible via SOLO, the Search Oxford Libraries Online catalogue (designated ‘Bookcase’ and ‘Room A, BSB’ ). Some donation records are also held in the College Archives.
Please note: The Special Collections have been temporarily relocated to off-site storage for the duration of the RAAC refurbishment. The date of their return is presently uncertain; however, any requests submitted to library@stcatz.ox.ac.uk will be recorded and addressed as soon as possible.
Contact
For any general enquiries, please email library@stcatz.ox.ac.uk
The Library Team
Acting Librarian: Monika Newcomb
monika.newcomb@stcatz.ox.ac.uk
Library Assistant: Eduardo Ballesteros
01865 618116
Find Us on Social Media!
Facebook: St Catz Library
Instagram: @stcatzlib
Archives
Despite its modern foundation, St. Catherine’s College has an important Archive. The role of the College Archives is to preserve a record of the life of the College – both as an institutional record, and as a less formal picture of the life of the College community.
The Archive, based in the Library North seminar room, contains a small number of records relating to the Delegacy and a larger number relating to the foundation of the College, in addition to administrative records. The Archive primarily collects material relating to students, events in College, and commentary on College architecture. Some donation records are also held in the College Archives.
The principal objective of the Archive is to collect, preserve, and promote the use of records documenting the history of the College. This includes records of its administration and finances, land and property ownership, and individual members of College. It aims to support the College’s educational, cultural, and charitable objectives, and to be a repository of evidence and information valuable to professional and private researchers alike.
The Archive is looked after by Barbara Costa, College Archivist and Librarian, who is currently on leave until February 2026.
As of August 2025, the Archive is temporarily closed for RAAC refurbishment until further notice. You are welcome to submit enquiries, which we will retain and aim to fulfil once the Archive service resumes at the College. However, please note that we are currently unable to provide access to materials or to respond to research-related requests.
Acquisition Policy
Please see our Acquisition Policy here.
For enquiries and appointments, please get in touch.
Index to the Archives
Please see the Index to the Archives here.
For enquiries and appointments, please get in touch.
IT
All students at St Catherine’s College are provided with an account on the college NetWare servers, this username and password combination allows access to the computers in the Library, JCR and Staircase 18 computer rooms mentioned below. More information can be found here.
Contact
IT Support Request Form
Opening Hours
Library Computer Room: 08:30 – 23:55
Staircase 18 Computer Room Closed
JCR Email room: 08:00-24:00
The opening hours of the library and JCR, when different, supersede those given here.
Student Computer Rooms
There are three rooms in college equipped for computers for use by students:
- Library computer room; this contains 10 PCs, a colour laser printer.
- JCR computer room; located next to the JCR this facility is open to all college members and contains 5 PCs, and a photocopier / printer A4 and A3.
The Library Computer Room
A small charge is levied for printing to cover the cost of consumables and is paid for in advance via the uPay system. Students will be advised of the current charging scheme on arrival. This is currently 4 pence per sheet of A4 black-and-white printing and 10 pence per sheet for colour printing, also A4.
Common software packages that are available to students include Microsoft and Corel Office suites for general word processing, spreadsheet, database and presentation preparation; eXceed for running X-windows, and SPSS for statistics. Each user is allocated 10GB of disk space on a central fileserver; this is quite generous and extensions will only rarely be considered and then only if sufficient resources are available. Files stored on local disks should not be considered secure nor safe from deletion.
All students are given a username and password for access to networked computers. Without the correct combination it is impossible to log on to any computer and use your home directory. Students wishing to make use of the College email facilities must first register individually for an email account with Oxford University Computing Services, email account details are generally provided on arrival for those starting a course at Catz. Once these details are obtained, a variety of email packages are available for use on personally owned computers; instructions for configuring popular email packages is provided by OUCS With regard to PCs found in computer rooms, email should only be used on the machines set aside for that purpose within the email room. Internet access is also available from machines within the student computer rooms.
All student rooms have data-points for connection to the Internet. These are standard RJ-45 sockets operating at either 100Mb/s or 1Gb/s. Students wishing to connect their machines to the data network must register their machines – this process can be conducted online via web-form and does not require a prior visit to the IT office.
Student views on matters of college computing are aired to the IT Committee by two representatives, one from the JCR and another from the MCR. Matters that require prompt resolution should be directed to the appropriate student representative, or, when necessary, the College IT Officer. General information regarding computing issues specific to the college network may be found on posters distributed in the student computing rooms. For additional IT information, please contact us. For news about changes in how IT is provided at St Catherine’s please follow our Catz IT twitterfeed.
Printing
Connecting To Networked Printers From Personal Computers and other Devices.
College members may print to networked printers via either document submission by e-mail or uploading to a web portal. Accepted formats include Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint, PDF, JPG, GIF, PNG, TIF, and TXT . Users wishing to print other file formats should either convert the document to PDF format prior to submission, or print locally in one of the College’s computer rooms.
Printing documents submitted by e-mail
Send an e-mail with the documents attached that you would like to print, to printing@stcatz.ox.ac.uk, submitted jobs will then be queued until released. Please note that print jobs may only be submitted from your primary University account.
After submitting your print job visit here, login (using your College network credentials), select the ‘My Print Jobs’ tab where you will be able to select your desired destination printer and available (advanced) options such specifying pages, duplexing, or forced monochrome printing.
Printing documents via upload to a web portal
Using your preferred web browser visit here, login (using your College network credentials), and select the ‘Web Print’ tab.
Select whether you wish to print a particular web page (in which case enter the appropriate URL in the field provided), or a specific file. In the latter case ‘Browse’ for the desired file and once selected click on the ‘Next’ button after which you will be able to select your desired destination printer and available (advanced) options such specifying pages, duplexing, or forced monochrome printing.
In case of difficulties please contact the College’s IT staff.