From as little as €45.00 per year, Friends enjoy special benefits. As a Friend you: support the UBL financially. The foundation of Friends regularly contributes to the purchase of a unique items or make a financial contribution to the organisation of exhibitions; become part of a network of…

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…

“Digital Scholarship” comprises the many different ways in which researchers can make use of digital technologies for the purpose of academic research.

Need a book or journal the library doesn’t own?

UBL's collection exists to a large extent thanks to donations and financial support from private donors and funds.

Geographic information systems (GIS) are computer-based systems for editing and displaying spatial data. GIS tools allow users to create interactive queries, analyze spatial relationships, patterns or trends and visualize the output of all these efforts.

Publishing and sharing information has become more accessible. How can you judge whether or not a publication or an internet site is trustworthy? Here you will find some useful leads to help you judge information.

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

Overview of databases, reference works and websites for research in Molecular Science & Technology

The photographs collection of Leiden University Librarie (UBL) contains specimens of almost all photographic processes from the history of the medium, rare objects and artistic highlights. Together, they shed light on the history of photography as a technique, a means of scientific, historic and personal…

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…

The University Library's Open Science services are available to individual researchers as well as on the level of the University's faculties and institutes.

Your support enables the UBL to continue fulfilling its role for the Leiden University community. You can make a one-off donation or make donations on a periodical basis. Gifts can made for the library as a whole, or for a designated project, the purchase of a subject collection or the…

Overview of databases, reference works and websites for research in Life Science & Technology

The Executive Board has decided that Leiden University will endorse Open Access.

The Scaliger Institute facilitates research in Special Collections by initialising projects, organising symposia, publishing research results and fellowships.

You are a PhD candidate and the completion of your dissertation is approaching. What to do next?

As soon as your thesis has been approved, you will be asked to upload your final version to the Student Repository. The Repository is an online archive for Leiden University theses. You can send all questions regarding your upload to the repository to your Education administration office.

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.

Would you like to have your monograph published Open Access? This is becoming ever so attractive. Authors and publishers are increasingly discovering that online publication stimulates higher sales numbers of paper books.

Everyone working with research data will, at some point, come across the acronym of FAIR, which stands for Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable.

As people spend ever more time in cyberspace, so do criminals. The more reliant we become on digital technology, the more vulnerable we are to hackers, surveillance, and cybercrime. The past decade has made clear that cybercrime does not only affect individuals and organizations, but that nation states,…

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.

Collectie Wouter Swets

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…

Scholarly Publications is a sustainable archive for Leiden University’s publications, which researchers themselves can make Open Access by means of an upload via LUCRIS.

All University staff involved or interested in research data management are invited to join Leiden University Research Data Management Community.

With the creation of James Bond, author Ian Fleming laid the foundation for a sprawling media franchise. Since the first novel appeared in 1953, Bond has appeared in books, movies, comic strips, video games and countless other media. On September 30, the twenty-fifth instalment of the film series, 'No…

In the past half a century, China has transformed from an underdeveloped and inward-looking country to a major player in world politics. The country asserts itself more boldly on the world stage; not only in relation to nearby countries and places such as Taiwan, Japan, and other countries that share…

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…

A (digital) course reserve shelf offers the possibility to set library materials for a designated period aside.

Can you still remember the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984, or the Dutch royal state visit to Indonesia in 1971? These are only a few of the dramatic events covered by Hans Beynon, whose archive of 7.000 photos was recently donated to the Leiden University Libraries (UBL) by his family.

On 21st June 2017, Yury Uraksin, First Secretary of the Russian Embassy in the Netherlands, presented the Illustrated Chronicles of Ivan the Terrible also known as the “Tsar Book” to Leiden University.

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 your summer reading list still unfinished, take a look at the list below and borrow your book through the UBL catalogue.

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.

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…

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.

The universities in the Netherlands and Cambridge University Press (CUP) have recently concluded a three-year agreement guaranteeing 100% open access to academic journals. As of June 1, researchers at Dutch universities will be able to publish articles in CUP’s full open access journals via the so-called…

From rapidly rising global temperatures to the increasing frequency of catastrophic weather events, every year the effects of the climate crisis become more apparent. Can literature help us envision a life after climate change?

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, now thirty years ago, Russia lost much of its former prestige, influence, and territory. The ascent of Vladimir Putin initiated a turning point: Russia has once again developed itself into a major player on the world stage, garnering ever more influence in its…

Did you also read a lot this summer? We made some real headway on our bookshelves. After all, nothing beats reading a beautiful or thrilling book outside. In this reading list, you'll find our favourite books for the summer of 2022. If you have any suggestions, let us know via Twitter, Facebook or I…

The year 2023 saw the earthquake in Turkey and Syria, the Wagner Group rebellion and wildfires and floods as all the weather records were smashed. Our most-read stories were about the climate crisis and the elections: here’s the list.

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…

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.

Ten Leiden museums and heritage institutions have curated the online exhibition ‘Carel’s Universe’. They selected objects from their collections that symbolise retiring Rector Magnificus Carel Stolker and the research in Leiden. With direct references, playful associations and the odd nod and wink.

Students from the Royal Academy of Art The Hague (KABK) designed the 450 lustrum logo.

In November, the Dutch will elect a new parliament. Not all eligible citizens will go out and vote, however. How can this be explained, and how big of a problem is it? International research into voter turnout can shed new light on this issue – and offer possible solutions.

The airspace had almost closed last year as Leiden students and staff rushed to leave the Netherlands Institute Morocco (NIMAR). How is this Leiden institute in Rabat doing over a year later? ‘Luckily we’d done a crisis exercise a few months before. Everyone managed leave the country in time.’

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