Loans and consultation
Loans and consultation
The National Library houses over 1.8 million physical documents covering all fields of knowledge. Our resources are available for home loan, on-site consultation or online.
Loans
Home loans and access to digital resources are reserved for readers who are at least 14 years old and live in Luxembourg and neighbouring regions.
Loan terms and conditions
You can borrow up to 35 physical documents at a time for a period of 28 days. If the borrowed document is not requested by another reader, you can extend your loan via a-z.lu or at the loans desk.
Documents located in the Reading Room
In the Reading Room you will find 200,000 documents covering all the main fields of knowledge. You can remove these documents from the shelves yourself, view them and borrow them.
Documents freely accessible in the Reading Room cannot be reserved online via a-z.lu.
On each floor of the Reading Room you will find several self-service loan machines. They allow you to register your home loan.
Documents in our closed stacks
In addition to the documents available in the Reading Room, the National Library also has a large collection stored in closed stacks. These publications can be searched and reserved via the a-z.lu portal. You must be logged in before you can request a document.
Reservations are generally available within 2 hours after ordering. You will receive an email as soon as they are ready for collection at the loans desk during the opening hours of the latter. Reservations are put aside for 7 days; after this period, they are returned to the closed stacks.
Some documents can also be collected, after reservation, from the self-service collection point located in front of the library.
Interlibrary loans
The interlibrary loans service allows you to get photocopies of journal articles, books or theses from foreign libraries. Before placing an order for an interlibrary loan, please first check on a-z.lu that the document is not available at the BnL nor at any of the libraries from the national bibnet.lu network.
On-site viewing
For conservation reasons, some documents are not available for home loan. However, they can be viewed on-site.
Documents located in the Reading Room
All documents in the Reading Room can be viewed on-site even without a library card. Some documents are not available for home loan. These are marked with a red band on their label.
Rare and precious documents
Rare and precious documents belonging to the BnL’s special collections are not available for home loan. However, they can be reserved via a-z.lu or by written request to the relevant department and then viewed in the Rare Books Reading Room on the 1st floor. A member of the BnL staff will guide you in the proper handling of these precious documents.
Microforms
The National Library provides microform reader-reproducers for the reading and reproduction of microfilmed or microfiche newspapers and books. Simply reserve your microfilms via a-z.lu and collect them at the loans desk. For conservation reasons, newspapers available on microfilm can no longer be viewed in printed form. A member of staff can assist you with the handling of microforms.
Returns
There are several options for returning documents. To return a book, you can drop it off at the loans desk.
Alternatively, you can return borrowed documents at one of our self-service loan/return machines. These are located on each floor of the Reading Room. Simply place the documents on the metal shelf and press the “Return” button. Then place the documents on the trolley nearby or the return box next to the terminal. You don’t need to put them on the shelf yourself.
There is also a flap for the book return machine outside the building, so you can return books even when the library is closed.
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