About NINO Near Eastern Library

As of 29 July 2024, the open-shelf collections of the NINO library are available to library users in the Middle Eastern Library reading room, in the Herta Mohr building. 

General information on the NINO Library Collection in the Middle Eastern Library (pdf).

The NINO library collections have been integrated in the Middle Eastern Library. The Herta Mohr building is connected to the main UBL building by an indoor footbridge. Visitors to the NINO library collections in the MEL will enjoy significantly extended opening hours, including weekends, and will gain access to a range of other services compliant with UBL policy.

Read more on the collections of the MEL on this page. Follow @middleeasternlibraryleiden on Instagram and @MELibraryNL on Twitter for updates on Leiden University’s new Middle Eastern Library (MEL).

The NINO library is an academic research library, open for the public but mostly used by researchers and students from Leiden University and other universities in the Netherlands and abroad – we welcome an average of 9,000 visitors yearly. The collection is directly accessible for visitors and meant primarily for study purposes; books cannot be borrowed. The NINO library collection contains an increasing number of digital resources.

The main fields of interest are Egyptology, Assyriology, archaeology, and the Ancient Near East in general. Other subjects are the Middle East, including Turkey, Iran, Islamic art and architecture, Hebrew studies and archaeological reports from the Levant area (F. Scholten collection). Since 2000 acquisition is mainly restricted to the fields of Egyptology, Assyriology and archaeology of the Near East.

The library includes special collections on travel literature and country descriptions, as well as the legacies of G.H. de Knegt (Egyptian art), R. Hoogland (Islamic art and architecture), D. van der Meulen (travel literature), and the Rudolph Said-Ruete/Seyyidah Salme collection (Near and Middle East). It also hosts an impressive collection of dynamic and static periodicals for all the categories available in the collection. Beside publications in western languages there are many publications in Hebrew, Arabic, Persian and Turkish and several other non-western languages.

The collection, about 44,000 titles, consists of monographs and periodicals, all catalogued. The online catalogue is available via the search box (top of this page), or through https://catalogue.leidenuniv.nl, under the subcategory “Leiden collections” > “NINO Library”.

As of 2018 the NINO Near Eastern Library is curated by Leiden University Libraries (UBL). As part of this new collaboration, the library now operates with twice its old acquisition budget for publications on the Ancient Near East and related subjects.

Other academic libraries in Leiden

The library of the National Museum of Antiquities (Rijksmuseum van Oudheden) is open to students and researchers. It holds more than 30,000 titles on the museum’s collecting areas, including Ancient Egypt and the Ancient Near East. Please visit the RMO website for more information on opening hours and policy.

The reading room of the African Studies Centre library is directly adjacent to the Middle Eastern Library reading room.