About the Library

TU Delft Library: an indispensable partner for research and education

For centuries, libraries have played an essential role in preserving knowledge and unlocking it to facilitate the emergence of new knowledge. The TU Delft Library has carried on this tradition since its founding in 1842.

About us (pdf)

The library has collected and preserved knowledge for 182 years, making it accessible to all. The digitisation of research and education has led to the significant evolution of library services in recent decades, and the library's playing field has expanded. Besides the 120 services for students, researchers, lecturers and staff of TU Delft, you can meet and get inspired at the TU Delft Library. Read our story.

Our mission

We ignite individual growth and societal impact, by providing access to diverse knowledge resources, fostering critical thinking and supporting lifelong learning.

Our vision

The TU Delft Library strives to be an inclusive, open, and trusted environment that inspires you to find, share and create knowledge. We are committed to providing effortless access to our collections and services. We foster a culture of trust to encourage you to engage in critical thinking, collaboration, and creative problem-solving. Our library will be a hub of knowledge that sparks curiosity and inspires lifelong learning.

Our values

Open

The TU Delft Library is a welcoming, open and inclusive library. We are clear about the services we offer and about how they are managed. We are committed to providing effortless access to our collections and services, for the TU Delft community and society as a whole.

Trusted

The TU Delft Library is a trusted source of support and guidance for students, lecturers and researchers. We provide reliable and high-level expertise. Our organizational culture is based on trust - an essential value in stimulating the exchange of ideas, innovation, and the ability to fail forward.

Inspiring

The TU Delft Library is an attractive building to work in, and the go-to place for study and inspiration. We embrace a culture that sparks curiosity and a passion for learning. We explore new pathways and aren’t afraid to step out of our comfort zone.

Our strategic themes and priorities

As TU Delft Library we have defined three strategic themes to shape and focus our efforts:

Open Science

With Open Science, open becomes the default method of sharing knowledge. Whether that be publishing journal articles, creating educational materials, or contributing to research software. This contributes not only to the transparency and quality of research and educational outputs, but makes science more easily and widely accessible to society as a whole.

Strategic priorities:

Supporting teachers in adopting and adapting teaching and learning methods through open education.
Developing policies and infrastructure that are crucial to the further expansion of Open Access practices.
Creating a stronger bridge between the current policy, infrastructure and culture of data stewardship and scientific practice.
Improving and facilitating various aspects of research software, including policy, infrastructure and organisational culture.
Advancing Citizen science and reviewing Rewards & Recognition.

Trusted Digital Service

TU Delft Library’s Digital Service Programme will deliver sustainable, trusted and engaging digital services that help meet the strategic aims of Delft University of Technology.

Strategic priorities:

Embedding service design. The programme aims to continuously improve the user experience of the Library’s digital services. This includes user testing, feedback collection, and service design improvements.
Building flexible and innovative infrastructures to underpin our online services, in particular our institutional repository.
Developing close collaboration with IT, with well-developed processes and governance for managing critical digital tools.
Embedding strategic staff development within the library, giving staff the skills to innovate, design, manage and develop new and existing services.

Inspiring Learning Environment

In the inspiring learning environment, the story of the Library with its wide variety of services and collections will be translated into the physical environment in an attractive, interactive and cohesive way. We aim to actively stimulate the collaborative role of our users (students, researchers, staff and citizens) in creating, collecting, and sharing knowledge.

We strive to contribute to the education of socially responsible engineers, by showing the connection between past, present and possible futures by telling the stories that can be found in our diverse collections.

Strategic priorities:

Developing coherent programming. The Library Learning Centre is the main stage for a well-known and highly recognized coherent programme of lectures, debates, exhibitions and other showcasing or storytelling activities that contribute to the socially responsible and reflective engineer, in other words ‘Bildung’.
Making services more visible. Library services that currently can only be found when searching the Library website, will also be made visible and (partly) accessible in the Library Learning Centre.
Activating collections. The Library Learning Centre is the place to get an overview of the different digital and physical collections. We invite visitors to actively use these collections in their research and education and to add their own knowledge or share their insights and expertise.
Updating ongoing and future facilities, resources and innovative services in the main hall. The main hall will continue to add new facilities, resources and innovative services, both based on the needs of our visitors and as experimental set-ups to evaluate and test new Library facilities, resources or service concepts.
Stimulating curiosity and serendipity. The Library can be viewed as a knowledge hub, where you can discover new things via the collections.