Odds and quads - 7 March 2013

These items come from a few of the nearly 10,000 boxes of archival material that have just been donated by the international development charity Oxfam to the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries.

Founded in 1942 as the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief, Oxfam now works in more than 90 countries around the world. Its archives include 34,000 “project files” documenting core activity between 1955 and 2005 and providing insight into changing policies and priorities. All the records are being catalogued and made accessible with a £360,000 grant from the Wellcome Trust.

Shown here are the shop in Oxford’s Broad Street in the mid-1960s, trenchant reports analysing barriers to the relief of poverty, a flag for the 1946 “Save Europe Now” appeal and a 1948 flyer.

The celebrity endorsers pictured are Julie Christie lighting a candle for Cambodia in 1988, Mick Jagger, and Gary Lineker photographed for the 50th anniversary campaign.

Send suggestions for this series on the treasures, oddities and curiosities owned by universities across the world to matthew.reisz@tsleducation.com