Libraries of the World: Leiden University Libraries, Netherlands

Leiden University Libraries (UBL) are located in Leiden, a city in the Dutch province of South Holland, Netherlands. Leiden University is the oldest institution of higher learning in the nation, dating back to 1575. Among the treasures of the university is the Leiden Botanical Garden, established in 1590, which introduced the tulip to Western Europe. Leiden is also an important place in the development of modern science, as the former workplace of Herman Boerhaave (1668-1738), a Dutch botanist, chemist, and physician. Dr. Boerhaave is considered the founder of clinical teaching and the modern academic hospital, as well as being known as a pioneer of physiology, the branch of biology that deals with the normal functions of living organisms and their parts. Dr. Boerhaave’s motto was the simple is the sign of the true, a good idea for students to keep in mind when writing English as a foreign language.

The UBL own approximately 5,200,000 volumes, 1,000,000 e-books, 70,000 e-journals, 2,000 current paper journals, 60,000 Oriental and Western manuscripts, 500,000 letters, 100,000 maps, 100,000 prints, 12,000 drawings and 300,000 photographs. Among its most distinguished departments are the largest collections in the world of materials dealing with Indonesia and the Caribbean. A former director of the Leiden University Library was Joseph Justus Scaliger (1540 –1609), a French religious leader and historian who was noted for stating: The greatest advantage of the library is that those who want to study, can study.

In 1983 a new building designed by the architect Bart van Kasteel was opened, featuring round columns with conical heads that support flat slab floors in what has been called a structuralist style. The British expert on medieval manuscripts Christopher de Hamel has written:

Leiden is an enchanting Dutch mercantile city, south-west of Amsterdam, with quaint old streets and sixteenth-century canals … The main university library is a vast modern building, designed between 1977 and 1983 by the architect Bart van Kasteel. It is not immediately obvious that it is a library at all and the entrance is hard to find among concrete pillars which flare upwards like inverted trumpets. There is a good deal of mottled concrete and shiny chrome.

An early pioneer in online information access, the UBL now offers its readers over 400 databases, 70,000 e-journals, 5,000 newspapers and newsmagazines, 1,000,000 e-books and reference works, and hundreds of millions of journal articles, as well as digital special collections and repository materials. TU students and ajarns working on academic research projects may be interested to know that all Leiden University doctoral dissertations are made available online by open access through the Catalogue and Leiden University Digital Repository.

A search in the Leiden Repository for the word Thailand reveals 43 results, including the following doctoral dissertation titles of potential interest to our researchers:

• Royalty and Nationalism in Thailand and Colonial Indonesia, 1908-1942: Case Study of the Courts of Thailand and Yogyakarta
• Travelling with the Tablighi Jamaat in South Thailand
• Soil Characterisation Over Various Land Use Types in the Pai District of Northern Thailand
• Street vendors in an urban jungle: notions of development in modernising Thailand
• Aspects of Islam in Thailand Today
• Why has the Thai Canal not been constructed until this day?
• Role of Developing Country in Providing Humanitarian Aid to Refugees: the Case of Thailand
• A journey to the past An analysis of the contemporary display of the Death Railway, Thailand
• Thai migrant women in the Netherlands : cross-cultural marriages and families
• Siam and the League of Nations : modernization, sovereignty, and multilateral diplomacy, 1920-1940
• Dutch East India merchants at the court of Ayutthaya : Dutch perceptions of the Thai Kingdom, c. 1604-1765

Since 2009, the UBL comprise the University Library, libraries of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Law, Mathematics and Natural Sciences and the East Asian Library. In 2013, the UBL took over the colonial collections including the entire map collections (colonial and modern) of the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) and in 2014 the complete collection of the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV). This vast amount of material amounted to 5 km of shelved materials directly available to readers and a new remote storage facility with 38 km of further shelved library materials. Last year, the Asian Library, a new floor in the University Library, was opened to further present this rich collection.

Dr. Kurt de Belder is the University Librarian at Leiden University, Director of the UBL and of Leiden University Press. Dr. de Belder previously worked at the libraries of the University of Amsterdam (as chief of the Division of Electronic Services), New York University (as Librarian for Western European Literatures and Languages and Electronic Text Coordinator & Head, Electronic Text Center), the University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University (focusing on collection management, cataloging, and reference). He was a student of Germanic Philology at the Free University Brussels in Belgium, Comparative Literature and Library & Information Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, USA. He has particular experience in implementing, improving, and innovating work processes in research libraries. He has explored the fields of metadata, collection management, faculty liaison and reference services, acquiring expertise in scholarly communication, digital libraries, e-publishing and e-learning. A number of his public presentations and lectures are available online. In a chapter on Information policy planning for the University of Amsterdam from 2004 to 2007, Dr. de Belder wrote:

A number of important goals of the Digital Library have been reached; meanwhile the phase has arrived where services can be refined and specified… Currently [services] are aimed at a kind of general user, who does not actually exist. The digital library will be arranged in such a way that it exists even more to fulfill the specific needs of readers through a wider range of customized services and instruments to question and manipulate information. Personalization will contribute an important part of this innovation. Furthermore, attention will be paid to improving remote-access support and further increasing user-friendliness. In addition, accessibility will increase in the coming years, further enhanced by global access to the digitalization as a way of achieving a library.

The library’s website explains about its mission:

The core business of the UBL is providing information to staff and students of Leiden University for their educational and research tasks. Though staff and students of Leiden University are the primary focus of the services of the UBL, others can profit from these services too. The UBL facilitates the access, the evaluation, the use, the production and the availability of information. The UBL is developing effective ways of collaborating with other libraries and cultural heritage institutes on a local, national and international level…

Our objectives:

• The UBL is a knowledge node for Leiden University, where information is produced, kept, used and shared – both physically as virtually.
• The collections of UBL serve as a source for education and research at Leiden University.
• The collections and services of UBL need to be as accessible as possible to students and researchers – whichever way, wherever and whenever.
• The UBL looks ahead to be able to prepare herself and her users today for tomorrow’s developments and opportunities related to her field of business.
• The UBL offers a sparkling and stimulating work environment in the challenging world of research information, in combination with a pleasant work atmosphere and attractive secundary conditions.

A Library Panel serves as a platform for students and staff at Leiden University offer views on services and products of the UBL:

The Library Panel was set up by the UBL to hear what students and staff think about the Library’s current and planned products and services. Panel members will receive a short survey a maximum of three times a year. These surveys could be about using the catalogue, suggestions for the UBL website, the use of mobiles for access to our digital publications or any number of other issues on which the Library would like to have your opinion.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)