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…

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…

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

The main focus of the Islamic World Special Collections is on the Middle East and North Africa, with smaller holdings from Indonesia, the Indian Subcontinent and Central Asia as far as Xinjiang, China.

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

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

In the course of over four centuries the book collections have been greatly enlarged thanks to the bequests and grants or the purchases from the propriety of scholars or private collectors. Sometimes it concerned collections with thousands of early printed books, such as the purchase of the library…

Our list of commonly used tools facilitate your work and research online.

Annually the Scaliger Institute offers working space and facilities to a number of visiting scholars from the Netherlands and abroad, without a fellowship, who want to research (a part of) the Special Collections of the University Library.

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…

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.

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…

Resources for searching Open Access articles, journals and books

The Library of Leiden University holds c. 550 manuscripts and an extensive collection of rare printed books in Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, the languages of Ethiopia, South Arabic, Coptic and Armenian, as well as a collection of rare books on the Jewish World.

Do you need help with writing your thesis or do you have a question about using the library? Take a look at the sources below.

A number of tools and services are available to help you keep up to date with the latest developments in your subject field.

Overview of databases, reference works and websites for research in Computer Science

What we now call ‘early printed books’ used to be ‘modern’ works in former centuries.

The Western manuscript, archival and letter collections consist of books and documents written in Latin, Greek and Cyrillic script.

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

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

Study support

Overview of databases, reference works and websites for research in Physics.

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

When writing a paper or thesis you are bound by the principles of academic integrity. There are strict rules concerning plagiarism. Citing your sources right is important to prevent plagiarism. But how do you read a reference and how to cite right?

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.

Do you have plans to conduct scientific research on the basis of the extensive digital collections of Leiden University Libraries (UBL)? Then the Fellowship Program for Digital Scholarship sponsored by Elsevier is something for you.

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 domain of the post-medieval manuscripts and private archives covers the period from about 1550 to the present. A clear distinction with the medieval manuscripts, however, is difficult to make. There are many undated manuscripts and it is often difficult to date them even within a decade or a quarter…

The submission deadline for applications to Leiden University Libraries (UBL) Scaliger Institute fellowship programmes has been set for 1 April 2024. The Scaliger Institute, the special collections research centre of the UBL, supports scholars in any field of study and from anywhere in the world to…

The submission deadline for applications to Leiden University Libraries (UBL) Scaliger Institute fellowship programmes has been set for 1 April 2023. The Scaliger Institute, the special collections research centre of the UBL, supports scholars in any field of study and from anywhere in the world to…

The submission deadline for applications to Leiden University Libraries (UBL) Scaliger Institute fellowship programmes has been set for 1 April 2022. The Scaliger Institute, the special collections research centre of the UBL, supports scholars in any field of study and from anywhere in the world to…

Some books have particular features such as design, unique illustrations and descriptive annotations. These features can be of interest for specific research.

Book reviews give you a quick overview of the main arguments, quality and structure of a book.

Study support

Read all about the most important functionalities of Mendeley.

Knowing where scientific information can be found and how to use it is of great importance for getting through university. In collaboration with teachers, UBL guides students in information literacy skills: from assessing information to searching in the Special Collections and citation management.

The Walaeus Library is Leiden University Libraries' medical library. The library is located on the first floor of the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC).

Leiden scholars succeeded in making Arabic accessible to Western academic communities as early as the sixteenth century. But how did they approach this problem?

A series of workshops at Leiden University and the University of Hamburg will act as a forum in which international legal scholars whose research adopts a behavioural approach can present their works-in-progress and gain feedback from a broad range of peers, including scholars in economics and cognitive…

With support of several publishers and private foundations, Leiden University Libraries (UBL) and the Scaliger Institute welcome around 15 to 20 Fellows and guests per year to consult and research materials from our Special Collections. The Scaliger Institute received applications this year from domestic…

Leiden scholars study clay tablets from ancient Mesopotamia. But what exactly does the cuneiform script say?

Leiden University Libraries (UBL) has received considerable funding from the National Library of Israel (NLI) and the Friedberg Jewish Manuscript Society (FJMS) for the digitisation of a collection of 166 Hebrew manuscripts. The digitised manuscripts will be made available to the public in the course…

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. The Lingling Wiyadharma Fellowship was made possible by Mr…

Overview of databases, reference works and websites for South and Southeast Asian Studies.

Overview of databases, reference works and website for research in the History of Science