Manuscripts relating to Nigeria in Rhodes House Library, Oxford

Extract

Rhodes House Library is a dependent institution of the Bodleian Library, the principal library of the University of Oxford. It is housed by the Rhodes Trustees, but does not receive regular financial support from them. Founded in 1929 on the basis of the university's existing collections, it specialises in the history, government, etc., of the non-Indian Commonwealth (the Indian sub-continent is the province in Oxford of the Indian Institute Library), of Africa south of the Sahara, and also of the United States of America. Its extensive manuscript collections, which run to some 15000 storage units (volumes, boxes, etc.) are therefore held alongside the printed holdings of a large specialist academic library whose statutory claim material (under the Bodleian's privileges deriving from British copyright acts) has been systematically developed by the acquisition by purchase or deposit of overseas publications.