Reading room in the Main Library (LSA)
The reading room in the Main Library is the university's central learning centre in the Old Town. It is available seven days a week and offers a comprehensive range of services with an extensive reference collection, around 1,000 workstations, 14 group study rooms and a reading terrace.
Use of the reading room
The reading room is freely accessible to everyone. The workstations are freely available. However, reservations are not permitted: If the number of readers exceeds the available space, library staff can clear occupied but unoccupied workstations after 60 minutes and release them for use by other people.
Opaque bags must be locked in the lockers on the ground floor and basement before visiting the reading room. With the exception of water in transparent bottles, it is not permitted to take food or drink into the reading room. At the entrance to the reading room, random bag checks are carried out according to a set pattern, regardless of the person.
Quiet and peaceful working is important to us in the reading room. Therefore, please observe the quiet rule that applies from the moment you enter the reading room.
Library services
During service hours, you can get help and answers to your questions at the reading room counter. You can obtain UB literature that must be read in the reading room as well as interlibrary loans that may only be viewed in the reading room there. If you would like to use the library on a one-time basis, for example because you have traveled a long way to get here, you can place a guest order. Outside of lending hours, borrowed University Library media can be returned in the reading room. Semester reserves can also be found in the reading room. The reference collection contains around 60,000 volumes of humanities and social sciences literature for direct use on site.
Facilities
The reading room at Heidelberg University Library offers space for concentrated work – a total of around 1,000 workstations, including 14 group study rooms and 18 individual study cubicles (carrels). Wi-Fi is available via eduroam, and you can connect your own laptop to one of nine monitors using an HDMI cable and use it as a second screen.
Copiers and printers are available for CampusCard or coin payment. Four book scanner machines allow you to scan documents to a USB stick free of charge – in black and white or color. In addition, ten laptops and 14 iPads can be borrowed for 10 working days.
Links
Provision of books and reproductions
Not all media from the University Library's collection can be borrowed outside the library. This applies in particular to all works published up to and including 1900, but also to other literature worthy of protection. We will make these titles available for you to consult in the reading room on request. The media are available for you for 5 opening days. If they are not used during this time, they will be returned to the stacks. Otherwise the books are usually available for 4 weeks. If you need the media for longer, you can also renew them in the reading room.
Please note that you are not usually allowed to make copies from old works yourself. It is possible to commission in-house reproductions of excerpts from works.
Books published before 1700 and other valuable works can only be consulted in the Historical Collections Department.
