Taylorian

Taylor Institution

The Taylor Institute seen from the Martyrs' Memorial
Country	United Kingdom
Type	Academic library
Established	1845
Location	St Giles', Oxford
Coordinates	51°45′19″N 1°15′36″W / 51.7554°N 1.2600°W / 51.7554; -1.2600
Other information
Director	James Legg
Website	Taylor Institution Library

The Taylor Institution (commonly known as the Taylorian) is the Oxford University library dedicated to the study of the European Languages. Its building also includes lecture rooms used by the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford. Since 1889 a prestigious Annual Lecture on a subject of Foreign Literature has been given at the Taylorian Institution.

The Taylor Institution was established in 1845, funded largely by a bequest from the estate of the notable architect Sir Robert Taylor (1714–1788). Modern European languages were not then taught at the University. (Not until 1903 were a Faculty and Honours School instituted in Oxford.) Since the Bodleian lacked space, the Taylorian was initially used to house things as varied as Stubbs's lectures on English history and the Hope collection of butterflies.

The Institution and its Library are found in the east wing of a neo-classical building, constructed by Charles Cockerell to accommodate the Institution and the Randolph Galleries (now the Ashmolean Museum), located at the southern end of St Giles'.

The library serves, for the greater part, those studying for the degree of Bachelor of Arts, for the various Master's degrees, and for the D Phil. The collections include Modern European languages, among them French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese languages (including the South American Spanish language and the Brazilian Portuguese language) with a total of around five hundred thousand volumes. The Greek and Slavonic collections consist of European languages found further eastward, including the Greek, Slavic (including Russian), Uralic, and Albanian languages.