Maastricht University Special Collections
The collections are part of the closed stacks department of the University Library which is housed in Grote Looiersstraat 17, a historic building dating back to 1757.
[1] The largest and most important special collection of Maastricht University is the Jesuit library which consist of more than 250,000 volumes of books with scientific, legal, as well as theological significance.
[2] In the course of the 1970s, many theological faculties were restructured or closed, including the Canisianum, a school for young priests in Maastricht.
[9] Factors that led to the golden age of illustration include: new printing techniques, cheap paper production, and better infrastructure.
In 1884, the name of the journal changed to 'Het Weekblad van het Recht, rechtskundig news- en advertblad '.
With financial support from the Academic Heritage Maastricht Fund, all 13,865 Weekblads have been digitized and made searchable.
[11] The University Library provides this block opening together with the Jan Van Eyck Academy and the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences which includes activities such as lectures, guided tours and assignments about anatomical atlases in the Special Collections.
[13] In August 2016, two students from Maastricht University, Samantha Jenkins and Angelica Giombini, were sent to trace back the steps of the Dutch Jesuits travellers in China.
Some of most notable in the collections are the 15th and 16th century books listed below: The Jesuits travelled the world extensively in their missionary pursuits and often they would map their journey to these new places.
Highlighted maps and atlases include those from Braun and Mercator which focus on cities and countries, respectively: As missionaries it was common for the Jesuits to settle down in a chosen area for a length of time to spread the word of Christ.
Thus, the Jesuit Library also contains ethnography and anthropology books that immortalised the lives and cultures of particular communities.
This includes programs and courses such as the Psychology Book Review and Arts and Medicine, and Style and Modernity.
Both of them focus on surgery and dated as far back as the 17th century: The biology section is another important category within the Jesuit collections.
The highlights showcase herbal books by early European botanists such as Dalechamps and Dodoens: Founded in 2012 the Friends of the Maastricht Academic Heritage Fund aims to draw more attention to the Special Collections at Maastricht University and to make this academic heritage available for education and research.
Chair of the foundation board is poet and emeritus professor of General and Dutch Literature Wiel Kusters, who wrote a biography on Kemp in 2010.
Other members of the board are Kemp-relative Wies Neuhof-Meijs and director of the University Library Maastricht Ingrid Wijk.
