Leiden University owns extensive collections of portraits. These include around a hundred painted portraits of scholars, librarians and professors and around 30,000 prints of scholars, politicians, rulers, artists, writers and other persons of fame. A smaller partial collection is that of writers, belonging…

Visiting address Postal address Witte Singel 27 2311 BG Leiden 071 - 527 2814 (General) 071 - 527 2800 (Reception desk) 071 - 527 2857 (Special Collections) Postbus 9501 2300 RA Leiden Courier services Witte Singel 27 2311 BG Leiden Goods deliveries Maliebaan 30 2311 CC Leiden

Welcome to Leiden University Libraries (UBL).

During the year 2021 and 2022 Leiden University Libraries illuminated the rich past of its university and its students by organising the thematic programme "University and Student life". Several online exhibitions, boekensalons and public lectures were organised around this theme, especially for the…

Under agreement with the Dutch National Archives (2011), all static archives created by Leiden University are kept as a loan in the University Library. In this way, users can study the history of the university and library in conjunction with other relevant archives, collections and items.

Leiden University Press publishes academic books and text books journals, primarily in humanities and social and behavioural sciences.

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

Study support

Leiden University alumni and PhD graduates can continue to use library facilities free of charge.

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

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…

Overview of databases, reference works and websites for Law

On 15 March, the Centre for Digital Scholarship at Leiden University Libraries has started the pilot ‘You share we take care’. In cooperation with Leiden University researchers, the program aims to make publications freely available six months after initial publication. More than 60 researchers from…

The archives created by Leiden University and the private archives of Leiden professors are an invaluable source for the history of the university and its functioning. The main sources have been edited (nearly always in Dutch). In addition, several studies have been published, describing the development…

Antariksa (Indonesia) is a researcher and co-founding member of KUNCI Cultural Studies Center, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. He is the 2017 laureate of Global South(s) du Collège d'études mondiales/Fondation Maison des sciences de l'homme fellowship, Paris, and currently Associate Fellow of the Institute of…

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).

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…

An impressive 21 research projects by Leiden researchers have been awarded Veni funding from the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

Facility, Library

The Asian special collections comprise tens of thousands of rare books, thousands of manuscripts, maps, prints, drawings and photographs, and hundreds of archives.

Lifelike gods, provisional professors and the city militia with weapons a clanking. Leiden put on a colourful procession and drummed up hundreds of citizens to celebrate the foundation of the first university of the Republic of the Netherlands on 8 February 1575. 'It wasn't a party just for the sake…

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…

An international consortium of research institutes, universities and non-academic partners in six European countries, including Leiden University, has been awarded with a research grant from ERC Marie Curie ITN for the project Mediating Islam in the Digital Age (MIDA). On behalf of Leiden University…

Leiden University Libraries (UBL) recently acquired a major collection of 19th-century photographs on South East Asia. The collection comprises more than 3,700 photographs of the Netherlands East Indies and mainland South East Asia, including Singapore, Myanmar, Penang and Malacca. The photographs are…

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…

Library, Research

Our collections contain many materials that are old, fragile, light-sensitive, maltreated in the past or much used and therefore tattered. Other items may be hundreds of years old and still be in sound condition. We aim to have all collections available as much as possible, while we also preserve them…

The Centre for Digital Scholarship offers training, events and presentations for members of Leiden University on the many different aspects of digital scholarship.

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.

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…