Collections - Zoology

Our collections support our department's undergraduate teaching, postgraduate studies and postdoctoral research.

See also: Searching & Borrowing

Main Library collection

The library collections include thousands of books covering the breadth of zoology teaching and research. These are a useful resource when writing an undergraduate project, a postgraduate thesis or a research paper. We buy copies of the reading list books for all Part II Zoology modules, including those shared with other departments. We also purchase all of the titles on undergraduate reading lists for Zoology-taught courses in Parts IA and IB. 

All our books can be found on iDiscover. These will be listed either as a print version with a classification number or a link to the online version of the book.

Book recommendations are always welcome via theonline form or by emailing the Senior Library Assistant. 

Theses

A collection of over 600 PhD and MPhil theses written by members of the Department of Zoology are kept in the Library Office. These are for reference only and are catalogued online on iDiscover.

The collection is by no means complete and no PhD theses have been added after 2019 as these are freely available online via Apollo, the University's respository. 

Due to copyright restrictions, we cannot provide print or electronic copies of all or part of any of the theses held in the Zoology Library. You must obtain this material from the University Library, see their 'Theses' page for more information. 

For information about theses from Cambridge and other institutions, see the 'Theses & Dissertations' page.

Journals

  • Physical journals

Most of our current subscriptions are only for e-journals, but we still subscribe to a small number of print-only journals. We offer a unique archive of hard copy journals in our library which can be found by searching iDiscover. The classmarks are not listed on iDiscover but there is a printed alphabetical list of all our journal holdings in the library.

Our e-journals are available through the iDiscover platform.

Special Collections

The Special Collections comprise approximately 8,750 volumes which date from the fifteenth to the mid-twentieth century, as well as over 60,000 offprints, manuscripts, photographs and several paintings. See the dedicated Special Collections pages for more information.