The Juynboll Foundation and the Scaliger Institute of Leiden University Libraries have founded a collaborative fellowship program to enable one or two scholars to study the Arabic and Islam special collections of Leiden University Libraries. The allowance is € 1,500 per month.

The Robert van Gulik Fund has established a Robert van Gulik Fellowship at the Scaliger Institute with effect from 2025. The fund thus supports the promotion of research on the sinological collections of the Leiden University Libraries.

Overview of databases, reference works and websites for research in Italian Language and Culture

The Lingling Wiyadharma Fellowship program offers the opportunity to three scholars to spend up to three months conducting research using the Southeast Asian and particularly the Indonesian special collections at Leiden University Libraries.

As of 2017 the Wouter Swets Foundation has invoked a Wouter Swets Fellowship at the Scaliger Institute. The Foundation supports the promotion of research into the holdings relating to the musical tradition from the Balkans and Turkey to Central Asia in the Special Collections of Leiden University Li…

The Isaac Alfred Ailion Fellowship will support scholars to work with the extensive Special Collections of Leiden University in the field of Japanese culture and language for a period of maximum three months.

Searching for relevant scholarly information can be a challenge. These tutorials can help you navigating the catalogue and other databases.

At the moment a lot of discussion surrounds ChatGPT, an advanced chatbot which uses Artificial Intelligence (AI). ChatGPT is based on a Large Language Model (LLM) and has been trained using an enormous amount of text, providing it with knowledge of grammar, semantics and contextual nuances. The program…

Leiden researchers are entitled to take part in deals regarding Open Access that have been arranged with a substantial number of publishers.

If an item is not available at Leiden University Libraries (UBL), you can try and obtain it directly from another library, request it using ILL services, or suggest items for purchase.

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.

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.

One of the tasks of Leiden University Libraries is to manage academic heritage, including letters and scholarly archives of leading researchers. Much of this material is nowadays created digitally and email is one of the main forms of communication. Hence, the UBL launched a pilot for acquiring and…

We are living in turbulent times. Various conflicts in other parts of the world at times give rise to feelings of anxiety, unrest and anger in our country too. We also see this happening in our academic community.

In September 2024, Leiden University Libraries (UBL) will dispose of a collection of dissertations from foreign universities published after 1850. This allows us to make room for new acquisitions.

The Dutch universities will give Open Access an extra boost from 2019 by starting a pilot titled ‘You share, we take care’ to make publications available after six months in collaboration with researchers.

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Leiden University teachers that have requested course reserves for students at Leiden University Libraries (UBL), or have made books non-lendable for educational purposes, now have four ways to offer these materials to students at home.

Leiden University’s Rector Magnificus, Professor Hester Bijl, has been reappointed for a second term by the Board of Governors.

European research infrastructures must become more sustainable in order to make the most of their scientific potential and thus increase European competitiveness, the League of European Research Universities (LERU) states in a report.

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.

A lot has happened at Cluster Zuid since the highest point of the building was reached in December. See the photo report below.

Nearly all university buildings at the Leiden Bio Science Park will be open and operating again as of Wednesday 24 May. Last night a team worked hard to restore the power to the buildings in phases and this was successful. Students and staff can work and study there again.

Curators devote a lot of attention to their collections. How is Martijn Storms, curator of maps and atlases at Leiden University Libraries, managing to do this now he is working from home? And how is Silvia Vermetten digitising Eastern manuscripts from home?

The Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo (NVIC) is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. Thousands of students and researchers from eight partner universities in the Netherlands and Flanders have been able to gain valuable experience in Egypt through the institute. Good reason for a celebrat…

On a sunny Lammermarkt, thousands of new students gathered to kick off their student life in Leiden at the 56th edition of EL CID.

Leiden University Libraries (UBL) in partnership with Elsevier hosted a series of online seminars on the challenges involved in achieving reproducibility in research. The seminars aimed to identify best practices that can help to overcome central challenges around reproducibility, and to convey several…

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…

The people behind the Leiden University Libraries aim to maintain the level of their services to clients as much as possible. They are making thankful use of internet, but not everything can be put online.

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…

There is a reasonable chance that you came to this reading list through a social medium. Now it's our job to keep your attention. We are going to do our best. There are so many distractions; from notifications on your phone, to another screen near you, that may also be screaming for attention. Every…

‘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…

The most important group of medieval manuscripts from the Special Collections of the University Libraries of Leiden (UBL), the Codices Vossiani Latini, is now available in open access via the Digital Collections. The 324 Latin manuscripts copied in medieval Europe, along with 48 post-medieval manuscripts,…

With a grant from the Digital Infrastructure Insights Fund D//F, John Boy and members of the d12n research cluster will explore new ways critical technologists try to align their work with digital technology with the political goal of defending the public interest.

Three enormous maps of China, created during the reign of three different emperors of the Qing dynasty, have now been made available in open access and are downloadable via Leiden University Libraries’ (UBL) Digital Collections. The rich maps are an early example of academic collaboration between the…

With its FestivOWL theme, Orientation Week Leiden (OWL) promises to be one big festival for new international students in Leiden.

Part of the Leiden University Libraries’ (UBL) collections on Southeast Asia is now available in digital form for research, educational purposes and the general public. The collections consist of manuscripts, old prints, photos and maps of Southeast Asia, which have been made available via Digital Collections.…

Leiden University Libraries (UBL) has digitized more than a thousand individual manuscripts and several complete archives from the post-medieval western manuscript and archives collection and made them available online through Digital Collections. With this, some of the most important archives and masterpieces…

There are differing opinions about healthcare for transgender young people. Lieke Vrouenraets investigated the ethical dilemmas.

Seven researchers from Leiden University have made a successful application to the Open Competition SSH (Social Sciences and Humanities) XS, a Dutch Research Council pilot programme.

Leiden University Libraries (UBL) has made 45,000 digitised daguerreotypes, autochrome plates, photo prints, albums, cameras and other objects from its photography collections available through Digital Collections. This means that parts of the oldest photo collection in the Netherlands are now digitally…

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…

Over 30.000 pages of new material have been added to the online collection of unofficial poetry publications from China in the Leiden Digital Collections. Produced outside the system, these journals and books are hugely influential yet very hard to find. To address this paradox, Leiden University Libraries…

An archaeologist as a modern-day shaman. An unexpected comparison Professor by Special Appointment of Public Archaeology Luc Amkreutz will make in his inaugural lecture.

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).

Leiden University Libraries (UBL) has been able to acquire an extraordinary Chinese manuscript at auction in Hong Kong. It concerns an Imperial Edict (dated 1582) from the Ming dynasty period, at one time part of the former collection of well-known sinologist and author of detective-novels Robert van…

How should we address our colonial heritage? And how digital and accessible are our collections? Outgoing State Secretary Fleur Gräper spoke with researchers and heritage specialists about this on 25 January.

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

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

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