Mission and objectives
Our mission
The core business of the UBL is to support research and education by making information available and accessible in a sustainable and open manner. In addition, the UBL also has a social, cultural and international role, partly because of the heritage it manages.
- To this end, we offer a digital and physical environment and facilities.
- We ensure the sustainable management and preservation of our broad and special collection and make it visible, accessible and open for different types of use.
- We enrich the expertise of our target groups in the field of scholarly information.
- We advise the university on policy in the field of scholarly information, including new (digital) developments such as open access, open science, artificial intelligence, IIIF, born digital and information literacy.
The staff and students of Leiden University and the LUMC are our primary target group, but given our broad social, cultural and international role, we also serve a variety of other target groups who can use our facilities, services and collections. To this end, the UBL develops effective, (inter)disciplinary partnerships with libraries and heritage institutions at the local, national and international level.
Core values
The UBL shares the core values of Leiden University (connecting, innovative, responsible and free) and has further focused these on its specific activities. The UBL works to further its mission based on the core values: expert, innovative, reliable and collaborative.
Our objectives
Partner in research and education
The UBL positions itself within Leiden University as a partner in research and education and offers user-oriented and high-quality, digital and physical services to researchers, lecturers and students, based on its expertise, including in the field of information and data.
UBL collection as raw material for research and education
The UBL strengthens the visibility, accessibility and usability of its collection for research and education within and outside the walls of the university. Where possible, the UBL collection is linked to relevant collections elsewhere in the world and is supplemented with current analogue, electronic, digitised and born-digital material.
Social and international role
The UBL is taking on a greater social and international role based on its collection through more public engagement with target groups in the Netherlands and abroad, in particular in Indonesia, Suriname and the Caribbean.
Robust and learning organisation as a foundation
To achieve the above, the UBL is continuing to build a robust and learning organisation with three core objectives: (1) securing knowledge, expertise and competencies through a strategic personnel policy, (2) support through state-of-the-art systems and techniques, and (3) realising up-to-date facilities in 2028.