Workshop | In contact with collections

Due to renovations, the Special Collections Reading Room will be closed between 6 and 17 May. Only limited services will be available. For questions, please contact specialcollections@library.leidenuniv.nl.

The special collections of Leiden University Libraries offer access to worldwide known valuable, rare, and unique materials. The collections are actively complemented and made accessible for research and education.

Leiden’s University Library provides access to a large collection of digital (contemporary) and digitized (historical) newspapers. These newspapers can be found through the library’s catalogue and through the library’s databases. Furthermore, the Dutch National Library offers access to several international…

The complete Johan Huizinga, the single most important historian of the Netherlands, is now available worldwide through the new Huizinga Online website. Huizinga’s scholarly archive, his Verzamelde Werken and his correspondence have been made digitally accessible by Leiden University Libraries (UBL).…

As a Friend, you contribute to the acquisition, digitisation and restoration of important objects.

Lecture, Studium Generale

The Friends of Leiden University Libraries Foudation (Stichting Vrienden van de Universitaire Bibliotheken Leiden) is an active society that gladly supports the library. The Foundation contributes to purchases of special works and collections and regularly organises tours, lectures and other activities…

The fellowship programs support researchers who are interested in doing research using the special collections.

The NINO Library is an academic research library, specialised in the Ancient Near East.

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

From research on stellar winds to sign language: an impressive seven researchers from Leiden University will receive a prestigious Vici grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

This year the Scaliger Institute received a record number of applications from domestic and foreign submitters for a fellowship to consult and research material in the Special Collections of the University Libraries. With the financial support of a number of companies and private foundations, the UBL…

Researchers from Leiden and Delft have found a way to look inside early-modern bookbindings. An x-ray technique has allowed them to search for remains of medieval manuscripts hidden inside the bindings.

As of April 1, 2021, Dr. Saskia Gieling will be the new managing publisher of Leiden University Press (LUP), the academic press of Leiden University. Gieling brings a wealth of experience in scholarly publishing to her new position. She succeeds Anniek Meinders who has led LUP as managing publisher…

Lecture, Studium Generale

Lecture, Studium Generale

The UBL develop collections which support the needs of faculty and students of the University.

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

UBL has assigned a Subject Librarian or Medical Information Specialist to each department and program who provides in-depth assistance for researchers and teachers

This subject guide is a work in progress, aimed to provide access to relevant academic works and online resources on Palestine and Israel, as well as, documentaries, films, and literature to familiarize yourself with the complexities of the conflict.

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…

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

Network meeting

Overview of databases, reference works and websites for Law

Overview of databases, reference works and websites for research in Ancient Near East Studies. Last update: October 2020

With its more than 1400 bindings and over a thousand fragments Leiden’s collection of medieval manuscripts (up to ca. 1550) is the largest in the Netherlands.

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

UBL recently received a donation of some five hundred books on the Italian occupation of Libya and on Arabic linguistics. UBL gratefully acknowledges this donation by a Leiden University alumnus.

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.

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.

Facility, 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.

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.

Love. It makes people do the strangest things and at the same time it is a primary necessity of life. Over the centuries, writers and poets have filled up entire libraries with books on real and fictional relationships, and contemporary writers still like to delve into the complex, dramatic and at times…

On Thursday 11 November, Jan Jaap Hooft and Marjon Hooft donated a special collection of glass negatives and photographic prints from the Arabian Peninsula to Leiden University Libraries (UBL). The collection is part of the estate of their grandfather Jan Albert Hooft (1883-1972). Hooft held a position…

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…

Special visit of seven ambassadors of the Arabic-speaking world to the University Library

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

Overview of databases, reference works and websites for research in religious studies.