Research Guide to Libraries and Archives in the Low Countries

This guide, eight years in the making, owes its existence to the Council of European Studies (CBS) at Columbia University. Conceived in 1982 as part of the CBS "research resources" series for scholars planning a first research trip abroad, it complements pre-dissertation grants awarded by the Council to doctoral candidates in the humanities and social sciences. Earlier volumes in the series, Research resources: libraries and archives in Germany (1975) and Research resources: libraries and archives in France (rev. ed., 1979), both authored by Erwin K. Welsch of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, served as a model and source of inspiration. Although it resembles the earlier CBS guides, this one hopes to appeal to seasoned scholars as well as newcomers by consolidating information into a single source. In recent years the National Endowment for the Humanities has fostered a new program, "Travel to Collections," which provides travel stipends for researchers using library and archival collections abroad. For these and other scholars, the guide intends to substitute groundwork at home for legwork abroad by helping them to plan their itineraries abroad in advance. Placed on the reference shelf in European libraries, the guide may also serve foreign researchers in identifying additional collections of interest to their quests.