In April (27 & 28), the 2023 Chair of the KU Leuven Institute for the Study of the Transmission of Texts, Ideas and Images in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (LECTIO) will give a lecture and lead an accompanying doctoral seminar.

LECTIO is devoted to the study of the intellectual history of pre-modern and early modern Europe. It builds on the strong and unique Leuven tradition of (art) historical, philosophical, philological, linguistic, juridical and theological approaches to the history of ideas. Its mission is to foster collaborative research across the boundaries of disciplines, theories and methods. Combining more traditional philological, hermeneutical and historical-critical approaches with new methodologies, LECTIO is also at the forefront of recent developments in the Digital Humanities and the application of Artificial Intelligence to the historical humanities.

This year, the LECTIO Chair is held by Dr. Barbara McGillivray (Kings College London), who will deal with approaches to studying semantic change in her lecture and the seminar.

The lecture is entitled “From corpora to semantic spaces: how computational methods can help us uncover word meaning change in ancient texts”. The accompanying seminar is geared towards PhD candidates, during which they will learn about the practical side of studying semantic change and variation. There will also be an opportunity for the PhD researchers to present their research and receive feedback.

LECTIO encourages PhD candidates to register for the doctoral seminar, not only if their work is directly connected with NLP or corpus analysis, but if they are interested in seeing the opportunities that these approaches could bring to their research. The registration form offers two options: (1) to attend only, or (2) to attend and give a short presentation.

The dates are Thursday 27 April for the lecture, and Friday 28 April for the seminar. Attendance is free, but registration is required. Further information can be found on the LECTIO website:

• LECTIO Chair Lecture
• LECTIO Chair Doctoral Seminar

William Wyndaele, historicus en donateur van het Bibliotheekfonds Letteren, schonk zijn privécollectie van ongeveer 2000 hoofdzakelijk moderne wetenschappelijke publicaties aan KU Leuven Bibliotheken. De schenking betekent een welgekomen verrijking voor onze collecties, in de eerste plaats de collectie Geschiedenis, maar ook de collecties Klassieke Studies, Humanistische & Neolatijnse literatuur, Kunstgeschiedenis, Oosterse Studies en Theologie & Religiewetenschappen.

Until 25 May 2021 KU Leuven users have trial access to two new sources on the Brill Scholarly Editions platform:

Eustathius of Thessalonica: Commentary on the Iliad

This is the online version of the complete critical edition by Marchinus van der Valk of Eusthathius of Thessalonica’s Commentary on the Iliad, composed during the latter half of the twelfth century CE, published in hard copy by Brill between 1971–1987.

Eustathius of Thessalonica: Commentary on the Odyssey

This online publication (to be completed in 2030) offers a new and complete critical edition with English translation of the Byzantine scholar and rhetorician Eusthathius of Thessalonica’s Commentary on the Odyssey, composed during the latter half of the twelfth century CE.

You are welcome to send any feedback about the trial to your Artes subject specialist.

In 2021 KU Leuven Libraries Artes is participating in 5 Evidence Based Acquisition Projects. This results in over 100.000 e-books being accessible for a period of 12 months. At the end of this period, a smaller selection of titles will be acquired (perpetual access) by the library according to collection profiles and in consultation with the academic staff, and (this is why the acquisition method is called evidence based) reinforced by usage statistics. When the EBA Project ends, the library is free to engage for another term of 12 months, thus keeping the larger (not purchased) EBA-collection accessible.

Started in January 2021

Cambridge University Press: full collection* of e-books HSS (CUP + publishing partners)
Cambridge Core – Journals & Books Online | Cambridge University Press (kuleuven.be)

Taylor & Francis (Routledge): defined set of a limited number of preselected titles
Home | Taylor & Francis Group (kuleuven.be)

New from April 2021 onwards

de Gruyter: full collection of e-books (de Gruyter + publishing partners)*
De Gruyter (kuleuven.be)

Brill: full collection of e-books
Brill | Over three centuries of scholarly publishing (kuleuven.be)

Benjamins: full collection of e-books
Books | John Benjamins (kuleuven.be)

*not included: HTML text books, Cambridge Companions, Cambridge Histories

Library Central Services is working hard in order to make all individual titles accessible through Limo. There may, however, be a delay of up to one month in adding newly published titles. In the meantime, those titles can be accessed directly on the publisher’s platform.