The Library consists of a main reading room on the first floor with additional desk space and reading areas in the two ground floor rooms. It also accommodates a number of study carrels which can be booked by students of the College.
The Library comprises part of the front quad of the main buildings of the College which were designed by Powell and Moya and awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects. They were opened in 1974.
The Library was originally designed to hold 10-12,000 volumes, but additional shelving had to be added as the book stock grew. In 1988 the former College telephone exchange was refurbished to form the Hornik Memorial Library in order to accommodate books from the Lincombe Lodge Library, a small private research library founded by Marcel and Tessa Hornik on Boars Hill.
Shortage of shelf space had become critical by the early 1990s, and following a Library appeal, work began in the Spring of 1995 on converting the rooms under the original Library to form a new extension. This extension, designed by the Oxford Architects Partnership, gave the Library a total capacity of around 37,000 volumes. A new entrance was made to the Hornik Memorial Library to integrate it with the rest of the Library, and the entrance corridor to the main Library was converted into an IT area.
The extension was formally opened on 2nd November 1995, when in recognition of the generous benefaction of Dr Stephen Floersheimer, the Library was officially renamed The Floersheimer Library. The work on the Library extension was granted an award by the Oxford Preservation Trust.
