Madeleine Evans

Sat 8 March 2025

University of Oxford libraries are partnering with OpenAI to digitise its collections and "enrich research".

Bodleian Libraries, a collection of 26 institutions across Oxford including the central university library which holds more than 13 million texts, has partnered with the tech company at the forefront of the AI revolution.

OpenAI is a California-based company which invented one of the most successful free-to-use, public AI softwares, ChatGPT.

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The University and company have entered into a five-year collaboration designed to utilise cutting-edge AI tools to enhance teaching, learning and research, and to digitise its early modern collection.

Students and faculty staff will also gain access to research grant funding and enterprise-level security.

Anne Trefethen, pro-vice-chancellor for digital at the University of Oxford said: "This new collaboration marks an exciting step forward, offering fresh opportunities to enrich our research, expand our AI capabilities, and foster skill development.

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"By working together, we can learn from one another, advancing the frontiers of artificial intelligence, understanding its impact on education and unlocking its vast potential for the benefit of our university community and beyond."

Bodleian Libraries' manuscript collections will be digitised in the AI collaboration (Image: University of Oxford) The pilot research project at Bodleian Libraries will digitise public domain materials in its collections, which had previously been unavailable online, to make them searchable and accessible for researchers worldwide.

One of these collections to be digitised will be 3,500 global dissertations from a range of disciplines dating from the 15th to 19th centuries.

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Richard Ovenden, Bodley’s librarian and head of gardens, libraries and museums (GLAM) said: "The Bodleian’s mission is to acquire, preserve and make available knowledge for the benefit of our students, researchers and the wider public.

"Over the centuries we have constantly sought new ways to take this mission forward and have in more recent years been an innovator in the use of technology.

"This initiative with OpenAI comes as part of this long tradition."

The project comes as part of the Future Bodleian initiative which aims to keep the libraries at the forefront of technological developments.

Mr Ovenden added: "The Future Bodleian campaign intends to expand digital resources and infrastructure to accommodate the needs of scholars across the world and to respond to the ever-changing nature of how information is created, stored and accessed."

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ChatGPT Edu, a secure version of the original software designed for academic use, will be rolled out to 3,000 scholars and staff to reduce admin burden and assist in tasks like research, summarisation and ideation.

University researchers will also receive access to OpenAI's latest models to accelerate their work in science discoveries, and research grant funding will be made available through the company's NextGenAI initiative.

Through this programme $50million is being committed to research by OpenAI, benefitting a range of US universities as well as the University of Oxford.