A library housing world class resources for the study of ancient Greek and Roman history is set to open its doors on Monday.

Oxford University's Sackler Library, in St John Street, has taken three years to build and cost £14m.

It provides space for 250 readers and houses more than 250,000 volumes, including works from the Ashmolean Library on classical languages, ancient history and archaeology, books on Egyptology and the Near East from the Griffith Institute collections, and volumes from the Western Art and Eastern Art libraries. Howard Carter's archive on Tutenkhamun's tomb is also there.

Librarian James Legge said: "The Sackler Library brings Oxford's extraordinarily rich concentration of resources covering the ancient world and the culture of the medieval world together under one roof for the first time."