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The programme for the Leiden Asia Year in 2017 is now available. Rector Carel Stolker launched the new website leidenasiayear.nl at the opening of the Academic Year of Leiden University on 5 September.

The La Galigo manuscript at Leiden University Libraries (UBL) has been digitized. The manuscript, which was inscribed in 2011 on UNESCO's ‘Memory of the World’ Register, is now freely available online and can be used for teaching and research. La Galigo is the world's longest epic, written in the Buginese…

From now on publications of Leiden researchers can be found in the fully renewed Leiden University Scholarly Publications Repository. This newest version of the repository includes improved presentation of Leiden research output and allows for better findability in search engines. As a result of the…

Leiden University Libraries (UBL) has been able to acquire an exceptional two-volume Miao album. The acquisition was made possible by the Rombouts Fund for Chinese collections. The extraordinarily well-preserved work contains 70 full-page paintings on silk, depicting non-Chinese peoples in the area…

Early 2022, the UKB consortium renewed a number of 'read and publish' contracts with major publishers.

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.

They might not have had Twitter, but they did have brochures (pamphlets), the Roman Catholics and ‘modern’ Protestants between 1840 and 1870. In these, they launched a passionate attack on each other’s ideas. Ineke Smit has catalogued the brochures from the collection of the University Library and outlined…

Elsevier has extended its co-operation with Leiden University Libraries’ Centre for Digital scholarship and the Scaliger Institute for two more years on a fellowship programme to support the study of digital collections.

Kirsten Sandberg appointed as Rotating Honorary Chair in Enforcement of Children’s Rights 2025/2026

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…

Amid rising polarisation and discrimination, lawyer and human rights activist Lilian Gonçalves-Ho Kang You wants to show in her Cleveringa Lecture on 26 November how dangerous exclusion is.

Leiden University Libraries (UBL) recently acquired a major collection of 19th-century photographs on South East Asia. The collection comprises more than 3,700 photographs of the Netherlands East Indies and mainland South East Asia, including Singapore, Myanmar, Penang and Malacca. The photographs are…

The Dutch universities are conducting a joint campaign to promote open access: free access to academic and scientific publications. Many Leiden researchers support open access. Given that it involves a shift in the financing from the reader to the author, they point out the need for effective agreements…

An evening program in the University Library and Middle Eastern Library in Leiden for everyone who has something to do with the Middle East; from Tajikistan to the Mahreb and from Istanbul to Sanaa. View the oldest books and clay tablets from the collection and listen to the most fascinating stories…

The Leiden Law Blog is celebrating its first anniversary. The blog attracts many visitors and scores well in Google. Tips for bloggers: link to previous blogs, post them on social media and respond to comments.

Friday 26 January 2018 saw the festive opening of the Bob Wessels Insolvency Law Collection. This Collection is a most valuable addition to the present prestigious collection on (international) insolvency and commercial law and will be expanded and kept up-to-date in the coming years.

The collections of Leiden University Libraries (UBL) have been enriched with the Maktabat al-Yaman al-Amstirdāmīyah, or Amsterdam Yemen Library. This collection, which exists of about a thousand books, journals and maps, is the largest coherent Yemen collection in The Netherlands and was brought together…

Knowledge Unlatched makes 343 new humanities and social sciences scholarly monographs available in Open Access.

A renewed agreement between VSNU and the publisher Taylor & Francis for 2016 and 2017 offers the opportunity for Leiden researchers to publish open access without additional costs in all hybrid journals published by Taylor & Francis and Routledge. We consider this to be an important step towards facilitating…

From study places to consulting collections and from a meeting with your faculty liaison to getting books after opening hours: the new Science Library offers it all. The library moved to a brand new location in the Gorlaeus building and will be open starting 15 April.

The board of the Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NINO) has agreed on June 27 on a plan for closer collaboration with Leiden University and the National Museum of Antiquities (RMO). The plan includes the launch of a NINO research institute with an annual budget of approximately 300.000 euro.

Erik de Maaker and Radhika Gupta received a Seed Grant to initiate research on how heritage has been and can be mobilised to address climate change governance in Himalayan Asia. This project will address a significant knowledge gap on the potentials and pitfalls of climate governance, with an initial…

Leiden University Libraries (UBL) has donated over 3000 historic photographs and prints on the Dutch East Indies, China, Japan, Singapore and Suriname to Wikimedia Commons, the image database of Wikipedia.

The Special Collections Reading Room houses a collection of 800+ facsimiles of Western manuscripts originating mostly from Medieval Europe. They enable students to consult a 3D version very close to the original manuscripts kept worldwide, especially those with contents or from cultural traditions that…

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…

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

The Greek diasporic queer poet Constantine P. Cavafy (1863-1933) has been recognized as a central figure in world literature and literary modernism. On December 9th, a symposium around his work will take place at Leiden University Libraries. This will be combined with the launch of Maria Boletsi's book…

Several of the most important manuscript collections in the Leiden University Libraries (UBL) Special Collections, comprising 443 extremely rare and often unique volumes, have been made available in Open Access via Digital Collections. The available manuscript collections include the private collections…

Leiden University Libraries (UBL) has made more than five hundred medieval handwritten text sources available online via Digital Collections. This makes a third of her collection of Western medieval manuscripts – one of the largest and the most important in the Netherlands – available in high resolution…

Leiden University Libraries revives Imperial Prague in Leiden with the exhibition Prague around 1600: Art and science at the court of Rudolf II. The exhibition can be seen from the 29th of September 2016 to the 10th of January 2017, in the exhibition hall of the Leiden University Library at the Witte…

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.

Modern Arabic titles in the catalogue of Leiden University Libraries (UBL) can now also be consulted in original Arabic script. Taking away the need to transliterate titles, has made searching for Arabic source materials in the catalogue much easier and more efficient for users.

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Japan museum SieboldHuis has a new showcase in its panorama room, in which maps from the Siebold-collection of Leiden University Libraries are exhibited.

In less than a week’s time, millions of Turkish people are going to decide who will govern their country for the next five years. These elections promise to be the most closely contested in years, with the opinion polls showing very small differences and everything at stake, including for Europe. Alp…

VSNU, NFU, NWO and Elsevier have agreed publishing, reading and open science services to support Dutch research and innovation ambitions.

The importance of science communication and cross-boundary collaboration, and the ‘mantra’ of diminishing social cohesion in society: these all came up at Leiden University’s 448th Dies Natalis. A panel discussion including Leiden’s mayor Lenferink, music and two honorary doctorates completed the special…

Leiden University Libraries (UBL) has made approximately 200.000 digitised books, maps, photographs and other materials available in Digital Collections via the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF). IIIF offers researchers and lecturers numerous new ways to share digital images from…

Private collectors John Steegh and Harrie Teunissen from Dordrecht have donated their entire collection of maps, city plans and atlases to Leiden University Libraries (UBL). In almost 40 years they brought together circa 17,000 map sheets and 2,300 atlases and travel guides. Especially the thematic…

The Surinamese-Dutch language, Parbo Beer and, of course, football. The ‘Dear Aunt Olga’ (‘Lieve tante Olga’) exhibition focuses on the shared Surinamese-Dutch culture. Full of cheer and with life experience to spare, ‘icon’ Aunt Olga (95) leads visitors through a shared history and does not shy away…

Leiden University Libraries holds an internationally unique collection of unofficial poetry from China. Produced outside the System over the last fifty years or so, this poetry is hugely influential yet hard to find beyond the informal networks through which it travels. To address this paradox, the…

Leiden University is celebrating its 450th anniversary in 2025 with a feast for the eyes, ears and spirit. The anniversary year opens with an extra special Dies Natalis on 7 February. Highlights includes an alumni festival, three exhibitions and a canal concert.

Starting January 18, the online exhibition Images of the Indonesian War of Independence, 1945-1949 can be viewed via the UBL website. The exhibition is the result of a collaboration between the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) and Leiden University Libraries…

Life cycle assessment (LCA) reveals the total environmental impact of products or production processes, and EU rules are going to make this even more important.

Few people would associate the name Anton de Kom with Leiden. Yet the Surinamese freedom fighter is the subject of an exhibition at Museum De Lakenhal.

Houses, warehouses, wells, a mooring and even a stable. All of this can be seen on the oldest known map of the island of Dejima acquired by Leiden University Libraries (UBL). The map provides a highly detailed picture of a tiny living environment on the isolated island.

The Yemen Amsterdam Library, or Maktabat al-Yaman al-Amstirdāmīyah, of eminent Yemen specialist Dr C.G. Brouwer has now been fully integrated in the collections of Leiden University Libraries (UBL). Books and other documents from the collection are now available for loan via the UBL Catalogue.

Leiden health psychologist Liesbeth Van Vliet receives recognition for her research on doctor-patient communication and its influence on quality of healthcare. Van Vliet has been awarded one of four Heineken Young Scientists Award 2022 for promising young researchers working in the Netherlands.