The Leiden University Visual Ethnography collection has been added to Alexander Street Press, an educational streaming video service. The master’s specialization Visual Ethnography has supported many talented individuals to produce inspiring films. About 70 master’s thesis films of the past 8 years…

Overview of databases, reference works and websites for research in Classics

Do you have books, manuscripts, and other materials and are considering donating them to UBL? If so, please get in touch with us.

Workshop

Open Access provides free online availability of research output without restrictions. Open Access increases the visibility of a publication enormously. The Executive Board has decided that Leiden University will endorse Open Access.

All University staff involved or interested in research data management are invited to join Leiden University Research Data Management Community.

Study support

Our collections contain many materials that are old, fragile, light-sensitive, maltreated in the past or much used and therefore tattered. Other items may be hundreds of years old and still be in sound condition. We aim to have all collections available as much as possible, while we also preserve them…

Knowing where scientific information can be found and how to use it is of great importance for getting through university. In collaboration with teachers, UBL guides students in information literacy skills: from assessing information to searching in the Special Collections and citation management.

All Leiden University Libraries' locations are accessible to people with disabilities or health impairments. Our staff will be happy to assist all visitors requiring specific assistance navigating the library buildings or services.

The Centre for Digital Scholarship offers training on research data management (RDM). Topics include Data Management Plans, FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) data, and publishing and archiving data.

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.

Practical information on submitting your dissertation

Quietly read a book in our new reading nook, listen to interesting and bizarre stories set in early twentieth-century Leiden, walk past literary locations in Leiden and watch the best film adapted from a Leiden novel as decided on by you. April is Literary Leiden month! A month in which we pay special…

Today is World Philosophy Day. We asked three staff members from the Leiden Institute for Philosophy to name three of their favourite works from the Leiden University Library (UBL) collections. What is: the best introduction to philosophy, the best philosophical work published in the last few years…

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'.

A live online New Year’s event on Tuesday 12 January marked the start of the New Year. Dean Joanne van der Leun toasted 2021 and as usual at this event, the annual Meijers prizes and thesis prizes were awarded.

This practical guide is aimed at PhD candidates, Research Master Students, and early-career researchers from all academic disciplines. The instructions in the guide intend to inspire young researchers and to help them practice Open Science, by sharing all aspects of research as open possible.

Researchers from eLaw, the Center for Law and Digital Technologies, published a new book on EU data protection law.

The Chinese Special Collections are part of the Asian Library. Items can be consulted at the Special Collections Reading Room.

The Air and Space Law (Advanced LL.M.) master’s programme at Leiden University is among ten ‘excellent master’s programmes’ at Dutch universities. This is according to ‘Keuzegids masters 2024’, a guide to master’s programmes in the Netherlands.

Our banking, DigiD and sensitive medical data: what if our entire digital infrastructure can no longer be trusted? Jelle Don has this question permanently in mind as he goes about his research. And that is no bad thing because without new digital security measures, our society will be extremely vuln…

Who can pitch a book so well that everyone wants to read it? These are the winners of the 2025 Alternative Reading List Awards.

Historian Peter Frankopan has been appointed Visiting Scaliger professor at Leiden University for 2017. The holder of this chair is affiliated both to the Scaliger Institute of Leiden University Libraries and to the Faculty of Humanities. Former holders of the chair include Anthony Grafton (Princeton…

Open educational resources, better known as OER, are freely accessible, reusable learning materials in various forms. OER can be extremely valuable for both teachers and students. On this page, we will discuss what OER entails, what their advantages and disadvantages are, what restrictions may apply…

UBL, Leiden University Libraries, is doing all it can to continue to offer its services. Even now the motto is, ‘work from home’. Who is doing want and how are things going?

Curators devote a lot of attention to their collections. How is Martijn Storms, curator of maps and atlases at Leiden University Libraries, managing to do this now he is working from home? And how is Silvia Vermetten digitising Eastern manuscripts from home?

With the creation of James Bond, author Ian Fleming laid the foundation for a sprawling media franchise. Since the first novel appeared in 1953, Bond has appeared in books, movies, comic strips, video games and countless other media. On September 30, the twenty-fifth instalment of the film series, 'No…

From experimental essays to comfort reads, and from manga to court literature in verse: Japanese literature has it all.

This Subject Guide is designed to support students of Korean studies at Leiden University in their research process. For every step of the research process, this guide introduces a number of tips and recommended resources. You can find several sub-guides and contacts in the 'quick links' in the tab…

Overview of databases, reference works and websites for research in Middle Eastern Studies

The Dutch Revolt or Eighty Years’ War and the Dutch Golden Age have traditionally been described in the national historiography as glorious periods; with the Dutch Revolt being depicted as a heroic battle for independence and the Dutch Golden Age as an unparalleled political, economic and cultural success…

A team including staff from Leiden University won the Open Initiative Trophy on 11 February, a prize for the best open science initiative in the Netherlands. The winners developed Reprohak, a hackathon-like event where participants repeat research to see whether the results were reproducible.

Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death across the world. Professor Johan Kuiper of Leiden University carries out research to develop a vaccine for arteriosclerosis, which is the main cause of cardiovascular diseases. With the aid of a European research grant of six million euros he is…

Leiden University celebrates its 444th anniversary in 2019, and a special age requires a special logo. The logo for the celebration was designed by Clara Lezla, a student at the Royal Academy of Art The Hague.

Goldband, Skrillex, Róisín Murphy and... quantum: the latter may not be a band but is part of the Lowlands line-up nonetheless. Scientists from Leiden University are using the festival for research on the very smallest particles.

How do we view friendship? And how have writers throughout the ages described that unconditional bond of trust in poems and literature? It's Poetry Week! And you guessed it; this year's theme is 'Friendship'. For this reading list, we went through our collections in search of the many ways friendship…

Overview of databases, reference works and websites for research in Urban Studies

From Persia and Arabia to North Africa: as early as the nineteenth century, there were Dutch people who used the camera themselves in various regions of the Middle East.

2020 will go down in the history books as an eventful year. The traces left by the coronavirus this year will remain, for students as well as staff at Leiden Law School. A review of the year in photos and videos.

Glorious sunshine, dozens of enthusiastic academics and huge numbers of Leiden residents ensured that this year’s special jubilee version of 3 October University was a great success.

Does medicine make patients feel better or worse? We are getting better at predicting this from people’s DNA profiles, says Professor Jesse Swen. ‘It never fails to fascinate me how one DNA base pair can have such a huge effect on treatment with medication and the outcome.’

Leiden Professor of Maths Frans van Schooten Jnr. (1615-1660) and his wife Margrieta were painted by Rembrandt. This is the claim made by mathematician and art historian Johan Zwakenberg in his recently published article in the 2018 Leiden Yearbook. Leiden art historians are not completely convinced…

How do you move 3,000 fragile clay tablets that date back thousands of years? This was the challenge faced by staff from the Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NINO). After years of preparation, the Liagre Böhl collection has been moved on trolleys to its new home.