There are several excellent options for teachers and researchers to engage students and other audiences with primary sources. Either by requesting items from the Special Collections for use during lectures or by integrating our educational resources into your lesson plans.

The collection guides of archives and collections of Leiden University Libraries (UBL) have been made available via the portal Collection Guides. This has greatly improved the findability, visibility and ease of use of these collection finding aids.

Open Access will be on the international agenda from 22 to 28 October 2018. Dutch Minister for Education, Culture and Science Ingrid van Engelshoven says she is proud the Netherlands is in the vanguard of the Open Access movement. ‘Publicly funded research should also be publicly accessible. That is…

Overview of databases, reference works and websites for Research in Russian and Eurasian Studies

Book reviews give you a quick overview of the main arguments, quality and structure of a book.

How do you pick a topic and research question for your thesis or paper? And is your schedule realistic? Check out the tutorials and resources below.

Workshop

A number of tools and services are available to help you keep up to date with the latest developments in your subject field.

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

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

Leiden University alumni and PhD graduates can continue to use library facilities free of charge.

Workshop

Workshop

Check whether you may incorporate journal articles in readers (via ReaderOnline) or place these articles on Brightspace, without having to pay costs via the Easy Access Agreement (also referred to as Reader Agreement).

Overview of databases, reference works and websites for research in Computer Science.

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…

The Library of Leiden University holds c. 550 manuscripts and an extensive collection of rare printed books in Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, the languages of Ethiopia, South Arabic, Coptic and Armenian, as well as a collection of rare books on the Jewish World.

Tips for using film and music in your presentation or essay

The Dutch universities are pleased with the announcement by the international group of research funding bodies (Science Europe) and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) that, from 2020, all publications resulting from projects funded by the affiliated bodies will be published exclusively…

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

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…

The webpage Diversity & Inclusion for the Faculty of Law is live. On this page, you will find everything about the faculty activities and plans in the field of diversity and inclusion.

On 11th February 2021 ZonMw and Health~Holland jointly launched the call 'Citizen Science voor Gezondheid en Zorg (CS4GZ)'.

‘What if we switch off all the lights one evening? That idea crossed my mind from time to time. And when I mentioned it to a taxi driver one day, he said: “Oh, you mean: lights out, stars on!” That’s not completely true, of course, because the stars are always on, but his phrase summed up the idea n…

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…

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.

Without academic freedom, we might not have antibiotics, nor a deep understanding of human behaviour. Literary criticism, climate models, and ecological restoration would be severely limited; just like ethical reflection on artificial intelligence, justice, trauma, parenting, faith and hope. All these…

Leiden University Libraries (UBL) has been able to acquire four remarkable medical manuscripts partly thanks to support from the Friends of Leiden University Libraries, the Pieter van Foreest Stichting and the Van de Sande Fonds. All four are largely written in Dutch and can be dated between 1595 and…

Gathering and distributing patient data can make an important contribution to containing the coronavirus. But if we want to be successful, we need better data. With this objective in mind, Leiden data stewards have joined the Virus Outbreak Data Network (VODAN).

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

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

A guide for finding Korean newspapers, magazines, live TV broadcasts and audiovisual materials.

Overview of reference works, journals and website for research in Gender and Women’s studies of Japan

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.

Overview of databases, reference works and websites for research in Art & Art History

Overview of databases, reference works and website for research in the History of Science

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.

From academic freedom to security and medical breakthroughs: during Leiden University’s 451st Dies Natalis, the speakers reflected on the role of universities in a world of social and geopolitical tensions.

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.

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.

To celebrate the formal launch of the Leiden Chinese Queer Collection (LCQC, 莱顿华语酷儿文献收藏), promote Chinese queer studies scholarship, and raise the visibility of Chinese queer history and culture, the LCQC steering committee will hold a workshop on 24-25 July 2025, under the aegis of the Leiden University…

In 2018, Leiden University Libraries (UBL) has worked on a project in which all researchers affiliated with Leiden University were encouraged to create an Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier (ORCID) for themselves. ORCID is an international system for the persistent and unique identification…

Researchers of Leiden University (excl. LUMC) are collectively using the Leiden Repository to make their publications Open Access available. They have, thereby, shown 75% Open Access publication of peer-reviewed articles to be an attainable goal for the 2017 and 2018 years. This has greatly increased…

Starting in September, 55,000 books from the Leiden University Libraries will be digitized. This marks Leiden University’s contribution to the successful partnership between the National Library of the Netherlands (KB) and Google.

In line with the university and faculty ambition: ‘Future-oriented development of students’, from now on all FSW bachelor students can follow a three-year elective, faculty programme with certificate for personal-professional development, the programme starts with current first-year students; they are…

Library

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…

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.

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.