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.

With support of several publishers and private foundations, Leiden University Libraries (UBL) and the Scaliger Institute welcome around 15 to 20 Fellows and guests per year to consult and research materials from our Special Collections. The Scaliger Institute received applications this year from domestic…

Rembrandt van Rijn is inextricably linked to the city of Leiden. He was born and raised here, went to school in the city, and spent the early years of his career in Leiden, a career that would one day make him one of the greatest painters in Dutch history. There is a similar connection between Rembrandt…

Korea specialist Koen De Ceuster has combined 1200 posters from North Korea in one database. He believes the posters are extremely valuable for researchers who want to make a more in-depth study of this closed country. The database will be launched on 15 June in Leiden.

In 2021, it is exactly 400 years since Hugo Grotius mounted his daring escape from Loevestein Castle, hidden in his book chest. Although his escape is a widely known event, especially in the Netherlands, the man behind the story and the reasons behind his imprisonment are often overlooked. In this small…

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…

Leiden University Libraries (UBL) has received a donation from Dr. Freerk Heule to digitise and publish an internationally unique collection of unofficial (minjian) poetry journals from China. These poetry journals are produced outside the official infrastructure for literature in China for literature…

Throughout the coming year, all attention in Leiden will be on Asia. This special year, featuring numerous Asian events, conferences, exhibitions and concerts, celebrates the new Asian Library at Leiden University. Come and read, watch, listen, taste or dance Bollywood style.

Wolters Kluwer and the Dutch Universities have reached an agreement about Green Open Access as part of a contract dealing with legal en fiscal literature.

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.

Last July, Robbert Dijkgraaf, Minister of Education, Culture and Science and Annetje Ottow, President of Leiden University's Executive Board, opened the new front office of the Leiden University office in Jakarta. The office - located on the grounds of the Dutch embassy - has a dual role. Firstly, it…

Last February, Leiden University Libraries (UBL) acquired a rare Chinese manuscript dating back to the Ming Dynasty. Three Chinese Studies students got the opportunity to decipher the edict (dated 1582) during their internships. In this UBLpodcast they share their findings.

Do you use our Interlibrary Loan Service to obtain books, chapters and/or articles from another library? From 28 January we will be moving on to a new application system.

Leiden University Libraries (UBL) and the Scaliger Institute are glad to welcome the first two Fellows for Digital Scholarship in fall 2019. The Fellowship for Digital Scholarship was established in 2019 with generous support from Elsevier.

One of the main functions of a University Library is the preservation of documentary heritage. Not just to facilitate research and education, but also because this heritage in many ways represents our collective memory. UNESCO has been registering special and often threatened documents in the international…

Do you frequently search the catalogue of Leiden University Libraries (UBL) for western medieval manuscripts? Then you must have noticed important changes lately. Some 1800 summary catalogue records in Dutch were replaced by more elaborate descriptions in English. Furthermore, the catalogue interface…

Over 160 years ago, the Hague-based photography pioneer and traveler Alexine Tinne (1835-1869) captured current South Sudan and its inhabitants on film. These photographs represent some of the earliest images taken in the heart of the African continent.

Historians recently started preliminary research on Leiden University’s role in colonialism and historical slavery. Our knowledge about this is too limited and fragmented. They are looking with fresh eyes at Leiden’s archives and collections. An interview with historians Alicia Schrikker and Ligia G…

Seven large reproductions of works by Rembrandt on seven Leiden University buildings reveal the relationship between the painter and the University. Rembrandt van Rijn enrolled in the University in 1620 and painted the portraits of various alumni of the University. In addition, the University Library…

Elsevier collaborates with Leiden University Libraries’ Centre for Digital Scholarship and Scaliger Institute to enhance the study of digital collections.

The 2020 Nobel Prize for Literature has been awarded to American poet Louise Glück (1942-). This means the Nobel committee passed by authors like Anne Carson, Jamaica Kincaid en Maryse Condé, many of whom were tipped by academics and literary critics as being strong contenders for the prize in 2020.…

The exhibition 'A Buddha in the Backyard: Asia as a Source of Inspiration' shows how we surround ourselves with elements from Asian cultures and gives a glimpse into the rich Asia collections of Leiden University. The exhibition runs from January 26 to May 9 and is on display in the exhibition hall…

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…

In collaboration with the Fotomuseum Den Haag, Leiden University Libraries organizes the exhibition Photography becomes Art - Photo-Secession in Holland 1890-1937. The exhibition shows a selection of 65 early art photos from the Leiden University photography collection. It’s the first time that early…

‘Huis van het Boek/Museum Meermanno in The Hague exhibits book bindings by leading Dutch Art-Nouveau artists from the period 1890-1910. The exhibition will be open from March 22 to June 23 2019. The title of the exhibition is De Bijzondere Band: Art Nouveau-boeken van Dijsselhof, Lion Cachet en Nieu…

The war against Ukraine did not start in February 2022, but in the spring of 2014 when Russia suddenly annexed Crimea and supported separatist militias in the Donbas. Last year, president Putin called for a restored geopolitical and spiritual trinity of Greater Russians, Belarusians and Lesser Russians…

Earlier this year, the Leiden University Libraries (UBL) Scaliger Institute announced a new fellowship: The Lingling Wiyadharma Fellowship. The fellowship programme is part of the Lingling Wiyadharma Fund.

On January 13, Prof. mr. Rick Lawson, dean of the Faculty of Law, handed over to Prof. mr. Carel Stolker, Rector of Leiden University, a binding with rare law disputations. The book is a present of the Law Faculty to the University on behalf of its 440th anniversary (1575).

From mid-September two exhibitions with maps from the collections of Leiden University Libraries are on view. Mapping Asia opens in the National Museum of Ethnology and Mapping Japan in Japanmuseum SieboldHuis. The exhibitions are organised in the context of Leiden Asia Year and the symposium 'Mapping…

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.

How did the mythical kings of ancient Persia live? In this podcast, we delve into the Shahnameh, also known as the Book of Kings.

Leiden scholars study clay tablets from ancient Mesopotamia. But what exactly does the cuneiform script say?

Leiden scholars succeeded in making Arabic accessible to Western academic communities as early as the sixteenth century. But how did they approach this problem?

Library

The collections of Leiden University Libraries (UBL) not only hold academic material, but also many novels, collections of poetry, non-fiction works and even cookbooks. Is there still some space on your summer reading list? Take a look at the list below and borrow your book through the UBL.

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…

LUC historian Jacqueline Hylkema unmasks forgeries from the early modern Dutch Republic in the research project "Mapping the Fake Republic".

The exhibition Leiden celebrates – 450 years of parades at Museum De Lakenhal shows how parades and society have changed through the centuries. Alumnus and historian Danielle van Goethem worked on the exhibition. She gives a preview.

UNESCO has recognized an international set of fifteen manuscripts about Ferdinand Magellan's first circumnavigation of the globe and the three Hikayat Aceh manuscripts as World Heritage. The manuscripts are inscribed in the global UNESCO Memory of the World Register. This list contains documentary heritage…

Library

For years now, the debate around Black Pete in the Netherlands has been one of the most controversial topics in the public sphere. And the intensity of the debate hasn’t waned much over time. According to some, Black Pete is just a character in a harmless tradition aimed at children, while others speak…

Leiden University Libraries has been elected to the Executive Committee of the IIIF Consortium. The term of office is two years starting from January 2022.

Beatrice Gründler, professor of Arabic Language and Literature at the Freie Universität Berlin, will receive an honorary doctorate in Oriental Manuscript Studies from Leiden University.

Manuscripts that look like a comic book, that's how you could describe the manuscripts of the Dongba people from China. The manuscripts are one of the last examples of a so-called pictographic script that can only be interpreted by Dongba priests, shamans, who have knowledge of the ancient Dongba cu…

As Scaliger professor, Erik Kwakkel is responsible for the academic context of the complete Special Collections of the Leiden University Library. His inaugural lecture on 15 May will focus mainly on the section closest to his heart: Medieval books.

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…

Antariksa (Indonesia) is a researcher and co-founding member of KUNCI Cultural Studies Center, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. He is the 2017 laureate of Global South(s) du Collège d'études mondiales/Fondation Maison des sciences de l'homme fellowship, Paris, and currently Associate Fellow of the Institute of…

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…

The Epic of Gilgamesh was a lifelong inspiration to artist Harry van Kruiningen. This tale from Mesopotamia about the adventures of Gilgamesh, the legendary king of Uruk, and his friend Enkidu is one of the oldest surviving epics in world literature. Despite its almost 4,000 year age, it still captures…

From 28 April onwards, national curfew restrictions will be lifted. Library opening hours will be adapted.