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Amsterdam University Library | |
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Location | Singel, Amsterdam, The Netherlands |
Type | Academic library |
Established | 1578 |
Collection | |
Size | 4 million volumes |
Other information | |
Director | Gerard Nijsten |
Website | www.uba.uva.nl/en |
Amsterdam University Library is the library of the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and the Academic Medical Centre (AMC). The central complex of the Library is in the town centre at Singel, close to Heiligeweg and Koningsplein. The Library's Special Collections are housed nearby at Oude Turfmarkt, next to UvA's Allard Pierson Museum. The Library also has a large book depot in the grounds of the AMC, with over 40.5 kilometers of books and other materials. The foundation Friends of the Library of the University of Amsterdam regularly donates special manuscripts or rare editions to the library collection.
The origins of the library can be traced to 1578, [1] when after the Alteratie (Alteration) books and manuscripts from Roman Catholic institutions in Amsterdam were gathered into a library open to one and all. This City Library was first housed in the Nieuwe Kerk and then moved to the attics of the Agnietenkapel at the founding of the Athenaeum Illustre in 1632. It was not until 1877, when the Athenaeum Illustre became the Municipal University, that the original City Library officially became the University Library.
In the 19th century, the collection had become so large (and the Agnietenkapel so derelict) that the books were housed at several other locations, until 1881 when the library moved to the Handboogdoelen at Singel 421, the former home of the Long-bow militia. During restoration works in 1968, much of the original 16th-century building reappeared and it turned out that the Library probably contains some of the oldest masonry in town and the only fireplace with a late medieval mantelpiece. The buildings at Handboogstraat 16 and 18 were added in 1919, and during World War II also the building at Singel 423, which has a façade from 1609 by Hendrick de Keyser. This was originally the town arsenal and later served as the royal stables. Queen Wilhelmina, who had fled to London at the outbreak of the war, gave her written permission to add the building to the Library.
The main building at Singel 425 is from the 1960s. Here were originally the premises of the Arbalest Militia, and later the 19th-century Catholic St Catherine’s church. In 1939 the church was demolished and the plot left vacant until the second half of the Sixties, when the new building by architect Jan Leupen was built. This modern building is considered a typical example of 1960s architecture.
The Special Collections at Oude Turfmarkt are housed in two adjacent buildings: one from 1642, designed by Philips Vingboons, the other from 1842-1843 is the former St Bernardus mental home. The restoration work on the buildings started in 2004, and the Special Collections library was officially opened in May 2007 by Queen Beatrix. [2]
In the course of its long history the Library has received many important collections, such as the library of Leeser Rosenthal, now called the Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana, on Jewish Cultural History. During the Second World War the Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana was confiscated and transported to Germany, but some of its most valuable items were hidden in the recently acquired Artis Library of the Amsterdam zoo Natura Artis Magistra. By a miracle this valuable collection was returned virtually undamaged after the war. [3] There is also an impressive map collection, collections on the history of the book trade, on graphic design and typography, and on church history. [4]
Special Collections have an image database (with a Dutch interface) where objects from its collections or even whole books can be viewed.
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Leiden University Libraries is a library founded in 1575 in Leiden, Netherlands. It is regarded as a significant place in the development of European culture: it is a part of a small number of cultural centres that gave direction to the development and spread of knowledge during the Enlightenment. This was due particularly to the simultaneous presence of a unique collection of exceptional sources and scholars. Holdings include 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, 300,000 photographs and 3,000 cuneiform tablets. The library manages the largest collections worldwide on Indonesia and the Caribbean. Furthermore, Leiden University Libraries is the only heritage organization in The Netherlands with five registrations of documents in UNESCO's international Memory of the World Register.
The Royal Library of the Netherlands is the national library of the Netherlands, based in The Hague, founded in 1798.
Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica (BPH) or The Ritman Library is a Dutch library founded by Joost Ritman located in the Huis met de Hoofden at Keizersgracht 123, in the center of Amsterdam. The Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica brings together manuscripts and printed works in the field of Hermeticism, more specifically the 'Christian-Hermetic' tradition.
The Openbare Bibliotheek Amsterdam is an organisation of public libraries in Amsterdam, Diemen and Ouder-Amstel in the Netherlands. The first library opened in 1919 at the Keizersgracht in Amsterdam. As of 2018, the OBA had 26 branch libraries, 177,000 members, and 1.3 million objects in its collection.
Michaël Henricus Gertrudis (Michiel) van Kempen is a Dutch writer, art historian and literary critic. He has written novels, short stories, essays, travel literature and scenarios. He was the compiler of a huge range of anthologies of Dutch-Caribbean literature and wrote an extensive history of the literature of Suriname, in two volumes.
Dirck Rembrantsz van Nierop was a seventeenth-century Dutch cartographer, mathematician, surveyor, astronomer, shoemaker and Mennonite teacher.
Observationes Medicae is a 1641 book by Nicolaes Tulp. Tulp is primarily famous today for his central role in the 1632 group portrait by Rembrandt of the Amsterdam Guild of Surgeons, which commemorates his appointment as praelector in 1628.
The collection of the Swiss collector René Braginsky is generally considered to be the largest private collection of Hebrew manuscripts in the world. It also contains a fair number of fine early printed books. The collection does not only contain codices, but also several hundreds illuminated marriage contracts and Esther scrolls.
William Bull II was a landowner who was for many years (1759–1775) the lieutenant governor of the province of South Carolina and served as acting governor on five occasions. A Loyalist, he left the colony in 1782 when British troops were evacuated at the end of the American Revolutionary War, and he died in London.
Juda Lion Palache was a professor of Semitic languages at the University of Amsterdam and a leader of the Portuguese Jewish community in that city. He came from the Pallache family.
The Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana is the Jewish cultural and historical collection of the University of Amsterdam Special Collections. The foundation of the collection is the personal library of Leeser Rosenthal, whose heirs presented the collection as a gift to the city of Amsterdam in 1880. In 1877 the city library had become the University Library, so the Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana was essentially given to the University. The Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana has since expanded to become the largest collection of its kind in Continental Europe, featuring manuscripts, early printed books, broadsides, ephemera, archives, prints, drawings, newspapers, magazines, journals, and reference books.
Jacob Cornelis van Slee (1841–1929) was a Dutch Reformed clergyman and scholar. He was the author of a study of the Windesheim Congregation, De kloostervereeniging van Windesheim, and between 1875 and 1900 contributed articles on theologians to the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie.
The Handboogdoelen is a building on the Singel canal in Amsterdam, near Koningsplein square. It dates back to the early 16th century and originally served as headquarters and shooting range of the local schutterij. Most of the current building at Singel 421 dates to the 18th century and is part of the main complex of the Amsterdam University Library. The Doelenzaal hall on the ground floor of the building is used for lectures, meetings, receptions and doctoral dissertations. The building has rijksmonument status.
The Voetboogdoelen was a 16th-century building on the Singel canal in Amsterdam, at the corner of Heiligeweg near Koningsplein square, which served as headquarters and shooting range of the local schutterij. Frans Hals painted a group portrait for the Voetboogdoelen, known as the Meagre Company.
Gerard Isaäc Lieftinck, known in print as G.I. Lieftinck, was a Dutch academic specialising in medieval European manuscripts.
As of 2018, Wolters Kluwer ranks as the Dutch biggest publisher of books in terms of revenue. Other notable Dutch houses include Brill and Elsevier.
Hansje van Halem is a Dutch graphic designer and type designer. Her work is typified by geometric, repetitive, sometimes almost psychedelic patterns. She works at the intersection of text, illustration, pattern, colour, texture, distortions, interruptions, variations, symmetry, systematic approach and irregularities. Van Halem combines the more open rules of patterns with the tighter ruleset of typography and explores the boundaries of type design. She uses the viewer’s distance to the work to move at the edge of legibility and non-legibility. In her understanding background and type should become one layer. Important to her are the process itself, “playing” around and working with trial and error. Her commissions rather revolve around the creation of identities, whole covers and patterns than individual fonts.
Joseph Shalom de Shalom Gallego was a Hebrew poet and ḥazzan.