Leiden University Library
Leiden University Libraries is the set of libraries of Leiden University, founded in 1575 in Leiden, Netherlands.
Holdings include some five million volumes, one million e-books, ninety thousand e-journals, two thousand current paper journals, and three thousand cuneiform tablets.
The library manages large collections on Indonesia and the Caribbean, and curates seven entries in UNESCO's international and Dutch Memory of the World Register.
Joseph Justus Scaliger, who was a languages and history professor at Leiden from 1593 up to 1609, commented in Latin on the library:
History
The 16th-century Dutch Revolt against the Habsburgs created a new country with a new religion. Soon, the need for a seat of higher learning was felt and in 1575 Leiden University was founded with the spoils from a confiscated Catholic monastery nearby.At the time the university was founded, it was immediately determined that a library in the vicinity of lecture halls was an absolute necessity. The library's first book was the Polyglot Bible, called the Biblia Regia printed by Christoffel Plantijn and gifted by William of Orange to the library in 1575. The presentation of this book is regarded as the base on which the library is built. The library became operational in the vault of the current Academy building at Rapenburg on 31 October 1587.
In 1595 the Nomenclator appeared, the first catalogue of Leiden University Libraries as well as possibly the first printed catalogue of an institutional library in the world. The publication of the catalogue coincided with the opening of the new library on the upper floor of the Faliede Bagijnkerk next to the Theatrum Anatomicum.
In 1864 the copy for the complete alphabetical catalogue of the library in Leiden from 1575 to 1860 was finished; it was never to appear in print. Readers were able to consult alphabetical and systematic registers of the Leiden library in the form of bound catalogue cards, known as Leidse boekjes. This remained the cataloguing system for the library until 1988.
The 22nd Librarian of Leiden University, Johan Remmet de Groot took the initiative for the Dutch library automation endeavor PICA. Pica was started up in 1969 and was bought by OCLC in 2000. The first automation project in Leiden started in 1976, produced 400,000 titles via the Dutch PICA-GGC and resulted within a few years in a catalog on microfiche, which partly replaced the famous Leiden booklets catalogue.
In 1983 the library moved to its present location on Witte Singel in a new building by architect Bart van Kasteel. The first online catalogue became available in 1988.
Leiden University Libraries today
The library facilitates access to published information and supports the evaluation, use, production and dissemination of scholarly information. To accomplish this the library's activities range from supporting education in information literacy to serving as an expert center for digital publishing. The library aims to function as the scholarly information manager of Leiden University. The strategic plan Partner in Kennis 2011-2015 focused on the transformation of the library to an expert centre supporting research and education in digital spaces through Virtual Research Environments and Datalabs, the realization of library learning centres, the development of new expert areas such as data curation and text & data mining, and on digital information skills.Leiden's Catalogue makes available more than 400 databases, >70,000 e-journals, >5,000 newspapers and newsmagazines, >1,000,000 e-books and reference works, many hundreds of millions of journal articles, its digital special collections and repository materials.
The special collections and archives of Leiden University are accessible through the library's Catalogue and Digital Collections environment.
The library supports researchers from Leiden University through its Centre for Digital Scholarship which focuses on open access, copyright, data management, text and data mining and virtual research environments.
The library makes all doctoral dissertations available online through the Catalogue and Leiden University Scholarly Publications that functions according to the open access principles. Furthermore, publications from Leiden researchers are made available through the same repository. Thanks to the use of international standards, including the Open Archives Initiative, the repository is visited daily by general and specialized search engines that harvest and index this information.
In 2007, the library started the renovation of its facilities: wireless access became available throughout the library in December 2007, in March 2008 the completely renovated Special Collections Reading Room Dousa was reopened, in June 2008 the fire protection systems installed in the closed stacks and the vaults of the library were taken into use, in December 2008 library patrons were able to make use of the new facilities created in the renovated Information Centre Huygens, and a new exhibition space was opened on 25 March 2010, in the direct vicinity of a completely renovated entrance. In 2012–2013 the study areas of the University Library were renovated and a media centre was opened.
Since 1 June 2009, the Leiden libraries form one organization: Leiden University Libraries . Leiden University Libraries has a number of locations: the University Library, the libraries of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Law, Mathematics and Natural Sciences and the East Asian Library. The collections of the former Archeology, Art History and Kern libraries are available at the University Library. On 3 September 2012, a Library Learning Centre was opened on the university's The Hague campus.
Leiden University Libraries took over in 2013 the colonial collections including the entire map collections of the Royal Tropical Institute and in 2014 the complete collection of the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies. By bringing these collections together with those of the university libraries, the largest Indonesian and Caribbean collections worldwide were created. Furthermore, Leiden University Libraries took over the KITLV-Jakarta office where extensive paper and digital collections on modern Indonesia are collected and cataloged. To house its world-famous and vast Asian collections a number of new facilities have been created: an open stack area making 5 km of materials directly available and a new remote storage facility housing 38 km of library materials. On 14 September 2017, Queen Máxima opened The Asian Library, a new floor on top of the University Library.
In 2017, the Academic Historical Museum became part of UBL. The library of The Netherlands Institute for the Near East, specialised in the fields of Assyriology, Egyptology and Near Eastern Archaeology, became part of UBL in 2018. In 2021, the Walaeus Library of the Leiden University Medical Center joined UBL.
In 2024 a new Science Library, African Library and Middle Eastern Library were opened.
Leiden University Libraries works together with other organizations nationally and internationally on innovation projects in this area. The library e.g. participated in the DAREnet project and in projects financed by the European Union such as DRIVER-II, OAPEN, PAGODE and ARMA.
Special Collections
Leiden University Libraries hold a large number of special collections of national and international importance. These include manuscripts, early printed books, maps, atlases, prints, drawings, and photographs. To make these collections visible for a broad audience, the library partnered in 2015 with , a richly illustrated magazine in Dutch for lovers of books with information about the early and modern book and graphic art.Western Manuscripts
The collection Western Manuscripts contains all western manuscripts, three hundred thousand letters, archives and three thousand annotated prints of the University Library, including the archives of the university. Among others, it includes the Bibliotheca Vossiana which holds the manuscript collections of Isaac Vossius. The codicies are mainly written Greek and Latin and amongst them contain some of the earliest surviving classical literature, such as the Leiden Pliny.Western Printed Works
The collection Western Printed Works contains materials printed before 1801 and rare and precious works from after 1801. In the course of four centuries the collection has been expanded through bequests, gifts and acquisitions of collections from scholars. Furthermore, the University Library obtained the deposit right for a copy of each book for which the States of Holland had given the privilege to print. The collection also includes more than 100,000 printed works from the library of the Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde which has been deposited on permanent loan since 1876.Bodel Nijenhuis Collection
The Bodel Nijenhuis Collection contains mainly old maps, atlases, topographical prints and drawings. Most of the collection was obtained as a bequest from J.T. Bodel Nijenhuis. The lawyer Johannes Tiberius Bodel Nijenhuis, director of the publishing house Luchtmans, for 25 years a member of the Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde, was a passionate collector of cartographical and topographical material.The collection contains 60,000 maps, 1,500 atlases, 24,000 topographical prints, 1,600 drawings and the archive of Youssouf Kamal's Monumenta Cartographica Africae et Aegypti.
Oriental Collections
From its very onset the study of the Orient was of vital importance to the new university. Theologians studied the Semitic languages to perceive the meaning of the Bible. Political and commercial interests prompted the new-born Dutch Republic to establish relations with its enemies' enemies, among whom the Ottoman Empire, then at the zenith of its power. In the course of its expansionist policy the Dutch Republic secured possession of the Indonesian archipelago and other territories in South East Asia. In Japan, Dutch merchants maintained a trading post to the exclusion of all other European powers.In the course of four centuries countless manuscripts, printed books and photographs on the Orient and Oriental Studies have found their way to the library of Leiden University. Oriental Studies are still flourishing at Leiden University, and the Oriental Collections are still growing to serve the needs of the national and international scholarly community.
The Oriental Collections of Leiden University Libraries are known as the Legatum Warnerianum, referring to Levinus Warner, envoy to the Sublime Porte at Constantinople, whose collection of 1,000 Middle Eastern manuscripts forms the core of the present-day Oriental Collections. In 1659 following the death of the Ottoman bibliophile-encyclopedist Kâtip Çelebi his library was sold. At the time it was the largest private library in Istanbul, and Warner acquired part of it for the University of Leiden.
The Oriental Collections nowadays contain 30,000 manuscripts and 200,000 printed books on subjects ranging from Archaeology to Zoroastrianism and in languages from Arabic to Zulu.