Jacques J. M. van Gent (8 June 1932 - 26 March 2021) was director of Leiden University Library from 1983 to 1993. He was librarian in a time of transition and, as director, was able to benefit from the new library building on the Witte Singel. Van Gent was a very different kind of manager from his predecessor,…

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.

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

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.

Leiden University Library (UBL) has made more than 20,000 digitised drawings and prints available via Digital Collections. This means that the core of Leiden University’s collection of European ‘art on paper’, which ranks fourth in the Netherlands in terms of size and importance, is now available in…

Dutch influencers like Romy Boomsma and Nina Pierson have a huge following on Instagram and are increasingly sharing book tips there. Researcher Aafje de Roest wants to find out more about the reading culture they are promoting and its effect on the reading habits of their mostly young female follow…

They might not have had Twitter, but they did have brochures (pamphlets), the Roman Catholics and ‘modern’ Protestants between 1840 and 1870. In these, they launched a passionate attack on each other’s ideas. Ineke Smit has catalogued the brochures from the collection of the University Library and outlined…

Is polder rice a feasible circular alternative for cows on peatland? A pilot experiment started this week. On May 22nd, researchers from Leiden University and Wageningen University & Research (WUR) planted roughly 3,000 rice plants on the Polderlab near Leiden. The researchers want to test rice as a…

The exhibition 'A Buddha in the Backyard: Asia as a Source of Inspiration' shows how we surround ourselves with elements from Asian cultures and gives a glimpse into the rich Asia collections of Leiden University. The exhibition runs from January 26 to May 9 and is on display in the exhibition hall…

Is polder rice a feasible circular alternative to cows on peat soil? In May, an experimental trial began, with researchers from Leiden University and Wageningen University & Research (WUR) planting around 3,000 rice plants at the Polderlab near Leiden. The researchers aimed to test rice as a middle…

BA 3 student Dasha Derzhavets is one of the first students to be back in the lab at the Faculty of Archaeology. She is conducting experiments in the ceramic and experimental lab for her thesis. ‘It is different in the labs, a lot quieter, I can better concentrate on my work however.’

Slavicist, translator and publisher Pim van Sambeek recently donated his correspondence with Nobel Prize winner Wisława Szymborska to Leiden University Libraries (UBL). Most letters were written in 1982-1983 before the first publication of a collection of Szymborska’s poetry in Dutch, translated by…

Leiden University Libraries (UBL), the Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NINO) and the Nederlands Fotogenootschap would like to invite you for the symposium ‘Holy Land’ and Modernity: the Frank Scholten Collection in Context’ and hands-on viewing of Frank Scholten photographs and albums on Monday…

Ominous witches, gruesome monsters, and hideous freaks: from Saturday 15 June, Kunsthal Rotterdam will be putting the spotlight on the shady depths of human imagination in the exhibition Hello darkness, my old friend. Seventy works on paper from the collection of the Leiden University Libraries confront…

The perception of the Middle East is riddled with stereotypes that have had dire consequences on its people. What is myth and what is reality? How did these stereotypes come about? What consequences have they had? All of these questions and more are answered within this reading list.

Goldband, Skrillex, Róisín Murphy and... quantum: the latter may not be a band but is part of the Lowlands line-up nonetheless. Scientists from Leiden University are using the festival for research on the very smallest particles.

Two Leiden University science communication projects have been awarded a WECOM grant through the Dutch Research Agenda (NWA). One project is a study of the history of the deaf community in the Netherlands and the other is of a condition that causes people to lose their way.

An evening program in the University Library and Middle Eastern Library in Leiden for everyone who has something to do with the Middle East; from Tajikistan to the Mahreb and from Istanbul to Sanaa. View the oldest books and clay tablets from the collection and listen to the most fascinating stories…

With an ERC grant, anthropologist Jasmijn Rana will explore how outdoor groups address the lack of diversity and how ethno-racial inequalities are experienced and resisted in Europe's outdoor spaces.

The Epic of Gilgamesh was a lifelong inspiration to artist Harry van Kruiningen. This tale from Mesopotamia about the adventures of Gilgamesh, the legendary king of Uruk, and his friend Enkidu is one of the oldest surviving epics in world literature. Despite its almost 4,000 year age, it still captures…

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…

Webinar, Q&A, discussion

Are we going vegetarian this year? Shall we keep the dessert the same? Where do I find inspiration for a festive meal during the holidays? For readers who like to postpone these questions, for those who like to tell a good story with their culinary contribution, or for those who simply want to know…

In 2022, every euro in the Netherlands lost about 10% of its value, price increases comparable to the stagflation period of the 1970s. In the same year, the value of the Argentine peso halved, while prices in China only rose by 2%. How well do we understand the economic mechanisms behind inflation?…

The Caribbean as we know it today is fundamentally a product of colonial activity and globalisation. Practically everyone that inhabits the Caribbean has ancestors from different continents due to colonial activity, which profoundly affects the area to this day. Caribbean writers, both in the Caribbean…

Workshop

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

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

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

Network meeting

Course, Digital Skills Workshop

Lecture

Lecture + Q&A

Network meeting

Webinar, Q&A, and discussion

Thousands of first-year students and hundreds of mentors kicked off the EL CID on Monday morning. This year for the first time, the introduction week of Leiden University and Leiden University of Applied Sciences was also open for students of Regional Training Centre mboRijnland and the Leiden Instrument…

Former President Kgalema Motlanthe of South Africa gave a public lecture on Campus The Hague on 7 July. His story was about the economic transformation of Africa.

A new memorial stone on the facade of a student house in the Hugo de Grootstraat is a reminder of the dozens of Indonesian students who studied in Leiden before and during the Second World War. Some of them were active in the Resistance, which cost a number of them their lives.

Better pay and new agreements with streaming platforms: the actors’ strike that brought Hollywood to a standstill a few days ago is mainly about money. But there is something else that film actors are worried about: the increasing use of Artificial Intelligence. Is this fear justified?

Software development is probably not the first thing that comes to mind when you think of a sociologist. Three years ago, John Boy began developing his software package Textnets. Because of Corona, he was less able to concentrate on writing scientific research and also setting up the online courses…

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…

Spatial technology such as virtual reality can help patients who have difficulty with spatial cognition, for instance if they keep on losing their way. In her inaugural lecture, neuropsychologist Ineke van der Ham will talk about the importance of avatars, the patient experience and room for innovat…

Leiden University Libraries (UBL) has made approximately 2300 old printed books and special editions available online through Digital Collections. With this, a small but important part of one of the oldest and most important collections of printed works in the Netherlands is now digitally available…

Bart Barendregt receives a Vici grant of 1.5 million euros from the NWO for his research project 'One between the Zeros, an Anthropology of Artificial Intelligence in Islam'.

UNESCO has recognized an international set of fifteen manuscripts about Ferdinand Magellan's first circumnavigation of the globe and the three Hikayat Aceh manuscripts as World Heritage. The manuscripts are inscribed in the global UNESCO Memory of the World Register. This list contains documentary heritage…

Starting January 18, the online exhibition Images of the Indonesian War of Independence, 1945-1949 can be viewed via the UBL website. The exhibition is the result of a collaboration between the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) and Leiden University Libraries…

‘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…

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…

Our ever-increasing reliance on software and technologies, out of convenience, necessity or otherwise, binds us to supranational and commercial companies that provide them. Is it essential that governments, universities, and researchers ensure that they continue to be in control of their data and software?…

A discount on textbooks is always welcome. But for these students joining a study association has meant much more than that alone.