The University of Oxford, or Oxon or Oxf, has been spreading light since the year 1096AD from Oxford, England with its motto 'The Lord Is My Light'. Oxon is regarded as the oldest university in the English speaking world and is one of the world's leading academic institutions. Oxon has some 38 independent colleges & 6 permanent private halls. The University of Oxford has a long history of its competition with the University of Cambridge which was founded by some of the teachers of Oxford in 1209 who fled away to north-east after a dispute between students of Oxf and townfolks. Some of the departments of the University of Oxford are:
- Centre for Quantum Computation
- Churchill Hospital
- Clarendon Laboratory
- Department of Engineering Science
- Nuclear Physics Laboratory
- Oxford Centre for Gene Function
- Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies
- Oxford Internet Institute
- Oxford Man Institute
- Oxford University Phonetics Lab
- Oxford University Press
- Programming Research Group
- Rhodes House
- Saïd Business School
There are various clubs, societies, buildings & parks in Oxford which also maintains a number of museums & art galleries. The Ashmolean Museum in Oxon is the oldest museum in the UK which was founded in the year 1683. It holds significant collections of art & archaeology, including works by Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Turner & Picasso as well as treasures such as the Scorpion Macehead, the Parian Marble and the Alfred Jewel.
Oxford's central research library is the Bodleian, founded by Sir Thomas Bodley in 1598 and opened in 1602 is the second-largest library in the UK, after the British Library, With over 8 million volumes housed on 117 miles (188 km) of shelving. It 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.
