In 2008, the last single-sex college, St Hilda's, admitted its first men, meaning all colleges are now co-residential. By 1988, 40% of undergraduates at Oxford were female;[32] the ratio is now about 48:52 in men's favour.
The detective novel Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers, herself one of the first women to gain an academic degree from Oxford, takes place in a (fictional) women's college at Oxford, and the issue of women's education is central to its plot.
Buildings, collections, and facilities[edit]
Main sites[edit]
The atrium of the Chemistry Research Laboratory. The university has invested heavily in new facilities in recent years.
The University is a "city university" in that it does not have a main campus; instead, colleges, departments, accommodation, and other facilities are scattered throughout the city centre. The Science Area, in which most science departments are located, is the area that bears closest resemblance to a campus. The ten-acre Radcliffe Observatory Quarter in the northwest of the city is currently under development. However, the larger colleges' sites are of similar size to these areas.
Iconic university buildings include the Sheldonian Theatre used for music concerts, lectures, and university ceremonies, and Examination Schools, where examinations and some lectures take place. The University Church of St Mary the Virgin was used for university ceremonies before the construction of the Sheldonian. Christ Church Cathedral uniquely serves as both a college chapel and as a cathedral.
In 2012, the University embarked on the controversial one-hectare (400m × 25m) Castle Mill development of 4–5 storey blocks of student flats overlooking Cripley Meadow and the historic Port Meadow, blocking views of the spires in the city centre.[33] The development has been likened to building a "skyscraper beside Stonehenge".[34]
Libraries[edit]
See also: Category:Libraries of the University of Oxford
The Radcliffe Camera, built 1737–1749 as Oxford's science library, now holds books from the English, History, and Theology collections.
The University maintains the largest university library system in the UK;[35] and, with over 11 million volumes housed on 120 miles (190 km) of shelving, the Bodleian group is the second-largest library in the UK, after the British Library. The Bodleian is a legal deposit library, which means that it is entitled to request a free copy of every book published in the UK. As such, its collection is growing at a rate of over three miles (five kilometres) of shelving every year.[36]
The buildings referred to as the University's main research library, The Bodleian, consist of the original Bodleian Library in the Old Schools Quadrangle, founded by
