Fellowship programme helps rare-books scholars

Elsevier and the Scaliger Institute of Leiden University Libraries have established a three-year fellowship programme to enable international rare books scholars to study 16th-18th century scientific scholarship and publishing. 

The programme will support two scholars to work with the extensive Leiden University Special Collections and the Elsevier Heritage Collection for a period of one to three months each year. They will be invited to share their research through public lectures and publications.

Elsevier recently launched the Elsevier Heritage Collection’s online catalogue, which comprises over 2,000 rare books with more than 1,000 distinct titles published by the original Elzevier publishing house from 1580 to 1712. The original company, which was closely tied to Leiden University, published work from contemporary scholars including Descartes, Huygens and Galileo. The modern publisher Elsevier, founded in 1880, was named after the original firm.

The Scaliger Institute will work closely with the Elsevier Heritage Collection team to provide training and expertise on preservation, exhibitions, display techniques, cataloguing, bindings, history and provenance study.