Leiden University Libraries hosts materials in hundreds of different languages, including many languages that are written in non-Latin scripts.

A collection consists of items and parts that have been collected by one or more individuals or institutions not responsible for their formation. An archive has been created by one or more individuals or institutions.

The standard loan period for items borrowed at Leiden University Libraries (UBL) is 3 weeks.

What we now call ‘early printed books’ used to be ‘modern’ works in former centuries.

Leiden University Libraries hosts materials in hundreds of different languages, including many languages that are written in non-Latin scripts. Since 2015, all items are catalogued in the original scripts. Therefore, you may use for instance Arabic, Persian, Russian, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean or Chinese…

The archives created by Leiden University and the private archives of Leiden professors are an invaluable source for the history of the university and its functioning. The main sources have been edited (nearly always in Dutch). In addition, several studies have been published, describing the development…

To mark the university’s 450th anniversary, the Leiden Discoveries science route has been updated and was relaunched on the Night of Discoveries. New signs in town and a revamped website tell Leiden residents and visitors the stories of the city’s spectacular discoveries.

The domain of the post-medieval manuscripts and private archives covers the period from about 1550 to the present. A clear distinction with the medieval manuscripts, however, is difficult to make. There are many undated manuscripts and it is often difficult to date them even within a decade or a quarter…

FeedbackFruits (FbF) is a digital teaching tool accessible via Brightspace. Below you will find how to use FbF in compliance with copyright rules.

Leiden University teachers wishing to stream audiovisual materials during online classes, can book the University Library's media room (ground floor) for this purpose.

Freedom is not something we can take for granted. In its thematic programme ‘Oppression and Freedom’, Leiden University Libraries (UBL) has explored views on identity, relations and the interaction between individuals and groups in the past. The programme included several (online) exhibitions, workshops…

Open Access means making your research public via a publisher or on a platform, so that its contents are freely available online. The CDS' Open Access Team helps authors navigating the OA landscape.

In the course of over four centuries the book collections have been greatly enlarged thanks to the bequests and grants or the purchases from the propriety of scholars or private collectors. Sometimes it concerned collections with thousands of early printed books, such as the purchase of the library…

The Asian special collections comprise tens of thousands of rare books, thousands of manuscripts, maps, prints, drawings and photographs, and hundreds of archives.

According to a rough estimate the western manuscripts collections and (private) archives contain some 500,000 letters, of which over 300,000 are catalogued. The letters kept in the University archives are not catalogued; the same holds for most letters kept in the oriental collections. They can be found…

Leiden University Libraries (UBL) owns over 5 million paper materials. Loanable items can be picked up and returned at the UBL library location of your choice.

Study support

Study support

Study support

Leiden University owns extensive collections of portraits. These include around a hundred painted portraits of scholars, librarians and professors and around 30,000 prints of scholars, politicians, rulers, artists, writers and other persons of fame. A smaller partial collection is that of writers, belonging…

The collection Prints, Drawings and Portraits comprises over 100,000 prints, 12,000 drawings and 30,000 portraits.

Workshops, lectures

The collections of drawings consists of around 12,000 drawings of mostly Dutch origin, dating from 1500 until now. The collections is the result of some major purchases, such as the collections of Albertus Welcker (1957) and Adolphus Staring (1969). Almost every Dutch artist is represented with a single…

Address Academic Historical Museum Academy Building Rapenburg 73 2311 GJ Leiden

The libraries offer several group study rooms, for use by Leiden University students. Rooms need to be reserved in advance, using the university's study places booking system.

The research suggestions below may be suitable for a bachelor's or master's thesis or can be used as additional source material in ongoing research.

The Western manuscript, archival and letter collections consist of books and documents written in Latin, Greek and Cyrillic script.

Publishing and sharing information has become more accessible. How can you judge whether or not a publication or an internet site is trustworthy? Here you will find some useful leads to help you judge information.

Leiden is a knowledge hub, unique in its kind in the Netherlands, for academics, professionals, students and all other people who are specialized or interested in photography. The city and university offer:

Course reserve shelves are a convenient way to temporarily group library materials together, for use inside the library.

In short, data management can be defined as the creation, storage, maintenance, disclosure, archiving and sustainable preservation of research data. Increasingly the so called FAIR principles are referred to as a final goal: data should be made 'Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable'.

At the moment a lot of discussion surrounds ChatGPT, an advanced chatbot which uses Artificial Intelligence (AI). ChatGPT is based on a Large Language Model (LLM) and has been trained using an enormous amount of text, providing it with knowledge of grammar, semantics and contextual nuances. The program…

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has introduced itself into everyone's lives. Naturally, Leiden University Libraries also has to address the development of AI. In this subject guide, we will give a short introduction to (Gen)AI and its effects on the university library. This subject guide has also been…

Scholarly Publications is a sustainable archive for Leiden University’s publications, which researchers themselves can make Open Access by means of an upload via LUCRIS.

Under agreement with the Dutch National Archives (2011), all static archives created by Leiden University are kept as a loan in the University Library. In this way, users can study the history of the university and library in conjunction with other relevant archives, collections and items.

The Executive Board has decided that Leiden University will endorse Open Access.

Overview of databases, reference works and websites for Law

A (digital) course reserve shelf offers the possibility to set library materials for a designated period aside.