Oxford LibGuides: Legal Skills and Research: Reading Lists

Finding things from your reading lists

Below are links to catalogues and resources to help you find the material on your reading lists in Oxford.

Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations This link opens in a new window
Free resource. Enter an unknown abbreviation to a law report or law journal from your reading list to find out the full title of the report series or journal. Alternatively,
search by title of a report series or law journal to find the abbreviation to use in footnotes.

This web-based service allows you to search for the meaning of abbreviations for English language legal publications, from the British Isles, the Commonwealth and the United States, including those covering international and comparative law. A wide selection of major foreign language law publications is also included. Publications from over 295 jurisdictions are featured in the Index. The database mainly covers law reports and law periodicals, but some legislative publications and major textbooks are also included. The Index is still under development.

Search our law reports and journals
Database produced by the Law Library to search our for the title of our law reports and law journals to find locations in both hard copy and online.
SOLO - University of Oxford Catalogue
Oxford E-journals
Bodleian Law Library - Legal Databases page
An alphabetical list of legal databases.

Reading list other online resources

Learnmore - how to get your hands on Legal Information tutorial
Produced by City University
Oxford Law Faculty Information for current students
Looking for lecture lists, reading lists and stuff?

Search SOLO

To search SOLO you can go to the SOLO home page at https://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk

The online guide below gives tips to make sure you make best use of SOLO

SOLO - Search Oxford Libraries Online
by Hannah Chandler Last Updated May 26, 2022 18179 views this year

Quick guide to reading lists

If you are not familiar with reading lists and how they look they can be quite difficult to decipher. Below is a video outlining how to interpret reading lists at produced by Oxford (Faculty of Law) but the main pointers are:

Tips for deciphering reading lists

Look at the front page information to find information about how the list works, any symbols used or abbreviations.

Try to determine which type of material you are looking for is it a case, article, legislation or book chapter. What type of information you are looking for will determine where you will find it. There are more hints on how to do this in the presentation below).

If it is a law report or journal, look on the search our law reports and journals to determine if a law report series or journal is online and available at Oxford

If it is a book (or chapter of a book) then look on SOLO to see whether is available online or where it is in hard copy. Many reading list books are kept on the law reserve and so you could go and ask.

If it is legislation then you can look on one of the databases (such as Westlaw or Lexis Library) to find an online version or use a statute book (you can search on SOLO for these).

Ask a librarian if you get stuck.

Guide to reading lists at Oxford

Below is a 15 minute video showing how to interpret reading lists at Oxford. If you prefer to view the video in WMP then the file is underneath. If you wish to view the video on YouTube then go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amjaA6uRsxM