18/08/2026
Tjiamke Snijders, Head of Special Collections of the KU Leuven Libraries, recently posted the following report - below an English translation. It also demonstrates how important it is to use images, maps, objects of material culture, paintings, etc. in classes and presentations:
An Smets, a colleague from Special Collections, has written an article in which she compares student notes from Leiden and Leuven. She shows that different subjects were taught at the two universities (more history in Leiden, more logic and physics in Leuven), but I had expected that. What was new to me is that the Leiden student notes contain virtually no illustrations, whilst the Leuven notes are full of them. Purchased engravings, hand-drawn sketches, scientific illustrations, jokes about student life or local politics – they’re all there. Here, for example, you can see an engraving of a Cartesian heart, and a student who, quite appropriately, has his logic course end in a jug of wine or beer.
Why would students in Leuven devote so much time to illustrating their lecture notes, whilst this hardly ever happened in Leiden? Leuven’s educational culture was, of course, Catholic and influenced by the Jesuits, so that images had a recognised pedagogical function (Gwendoline De Muêlenaere, incidentally, has a fine article on drawing as a teaching method in the same collection). I imagine that in Calvinist Leiden, the idea of an image as a pedagogical tool would have been less developed. Whatever the reason behind it, it is certainly fascinating!
For those who would like to find out more about Leuven student notes: Violet Soen et al., *Students, Scholars and Their Books at the University of Louvain (1425–1797)*, available via Open Access.
Leuvense studentennotities uit de 17e eeuw staan vol met illustraties. Leidse studentennotities hebben er nauwelijks. Vreemd. Bijzondere Collecties-collega An Smets schreef een artikel waarin ze de Leidse en Leuvense studentennotities met elkaar vergelijkt. Ze laat daar zien dat er in de universitei...
