Opening hours

For up-to-date information on opening hours see the link below. 

Library services

Study facilities
The library and study rooms house approximately 50 seats. Seats in the building’s recesses are workstations designed for laptops. Visitors can access the digital library by using one of the three public computers available. A PC for reading CD-ROMs is also available.

Catalogues
Subject catalogues the libraries’ collection in its entirety. A systematic card catalogue has been kept until 1993. Since then volumes have been entered online according to the GGC (Shared Automated Cataloguing System) method. Their titles can be found in UvA’s catalogue. All undergraduate dissertations (over 700) can be retrieved by browsing the automated theses catalogue.

Circulation
Books on loan can be renewed twice, or reserved via the online catalogue. For consultation only are: all journals, volumes which are part of collected works, the bulk of reference works, several rare editions and books reserved for lectures and seminars.

ILL – account
These can be opened at the desk of the philosophy library. UvA-students receive an € 12.00 single free deposit after showing their valid student card. Requests are deducted from this deposit. Articles are sent, books have to be collected at the library desk. In general, ILL-transactions take about one working week to be completed. Interested? Pay a visit to our library. Opening an account, including instructions, takes some time. We therefore kindly request you to visit us at a quiet moment, for instance before noon.

Materials for seminars and readers
A special shelf containing books reserved for educational purposes is placed in the circulation room. These books are temporarily for consultation only so that every student can use them. There is also a filing cabinet containing readers sorted on the lecturer’s name.

Copy machine
A copy machine is available. Copy cards can be obtained from the porter.

Acquisitions table
Recently acquired volumes will be put on display for a certain period. They can be lent out from the moment they are put there. Exception to this rule is books, which can only be consulted for reasons stated above. For the most recent acquisitions check the list.

Lecturer’s articles
Our library has trays for filing reprinted articles.

Courses
Once a year we offer new students a course in library use as part of the information-skills module. Subjects treated are: use of the library, UvA catalogue, Dutch (Pica) contents and the digital library. A tour of the UB is also included. Philosophy offers the course in the second term. Check the information-skills module webpage for further details.

Staff

Name, telephone number and E-mail addresses of our employees.

Collection

Our library houses approximately 30.000 works and this collection contains a large number of reference works in the field of philosophy. It also contains many primary and secondary works by and on philosophers, and monographs on the systematic aspects of philosophy. We subscribe to approximately 100 journals. Both books and journals are placed on open stacks.