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…

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

Library exhibitions, both online and physical, give an idea of the breadth of our collections.

In 2023, it will be fifty years since Vietnam and the Netherlands established diplomatic relations. This will be commemorated in both countries. At the beginning of November, outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte visited Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. On that occasion Leiden University Libraries will launch…

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.

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.

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…

The collection of maps and atlases consists of approximately 100,000 map sheets (including c. 3,000 manuscript maps), 3,500 atlases and 25,000 topographical prints and drawings.

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…

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

In November, Leiden University Libraries (UBL) welcomed the first Lingling Wiyadharma Fellows in the Special Collections reading room. Fellows Chin Nyuk Tin, Evi Fuji Fauziyah and Arman AZ are all working on different research projects, yet their goals are the same: building bridges between Southeast…

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…

Katarzyna Cwiertka, Leiden Professor of Modern Japan Studies, was already the recipient of a VENI and a VIDI grant. Now she has also been granted a VICI, worth 1.5 million euro, for her research project Garbage Matters: A Comparative History of Waste in East Asia. ‘I want to do something that hasn’t…

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

The Southeast Asian Special Collections contain text and audiovisual materials pertaining to the languages, histories, philosophies, religions, literatures, and (material) art of the region. The focus lies on the Malay world, in particular on the Nederlands-Indies/Indonesia. Apart from books and periodicals…

The photo collection of South and Southeast Asia contains material collected by the Kern Institute and the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV). In addition to photo prints in various techniques, the collection also includes (lantern) slides, picture postcards…

The South Asian and Tibetan special collections provide material pertaining to the languages, histories, philosophies, art and material cultures of the region. The focus lies on Sanskrit, Tibetan, Lepcha, and Buddhism, but the collections also hold rich visual material for educational and academic purposes…

Welcome to the Sub-guide for North Korea. This Sub-guide is designed for students looking to locate, access and use a wide variety of scholarly and non-scholarly sources which are either (1) published or produced in North Korea or (2) about North Korea. This Sub-guide is a part of the General Subject…

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.

Alumnus Anoma van der Veere did Japanese studies and talks in this interview about his studies in Leiden and his work as a researcher at the Leiden Asia Centre and as Japanese correspondent in Tokyo.

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

Leiden University has library locations in Leiden and The Hague. Are you having trouble finding anything, or do you have a question? Our library staff is glad to help you. You can find them at the information desks, and around the library.

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.

Overview of databases and reference works for research in journalism and new media.

From Persia and Arabia to North Africa: as early as the nineteenth century, there were Dutch people who used the camera themselves in various regions of the Middle East.