About

TU Delft Library's Academic Heritage, History and Art team manages the university's special collections, organises on-campus exhibitions in co-curation with students and staff, researches the university's history, and offers support to faculty collections.

The special collections consist of the Museum Collection, Trésor and Art Collection. The Museum Collection originates from the former Museum of Technology and consists of objects drawing from TU Delft's rich institutional history, education and research. The Trésor includes the Library's rare books, journals, maps, prints and photographs. The Art Collection features modern and contemporary art displayed across the university's campus while continuing to grow through new acquisitions and commissioned works.

By stimulating the use of the special collections in education, TU Delft Library aims to contribute to the formation of responsible engineers. In line with the Library's advocacy for Open Science, this website makes use of open data standards and contributes to the development of open source tools for publishing and enriching digital collections.

The Academic Heritage, History and Art team consists of:

Geertje van Achterberg (project lead for presentation)
Kornelis Fragakis (curator art collection)
Sylvia Nijhuis (curator Museum Collection)
Charlotte Rixten (head)
Marietje Ruijgrok (curator Trésor)
Jules Schoonman (digital curator)
Abel Streefland (university historian)

Tailor-made Approach to Faculty Collections

Since the foundation of the Delft Royal Academy in 1842, the departments and later faculties of TU Delft have collected a wide variety of objects for teaching and research. These objects often ended up in study collections, with informal caretakers or were locked away in storage rooms. Some have gained significant historical value, having been used for groundbreaking research or for the education of subsequent generations of students.

In order to support faculties in inventorying, evaluating and (re)using their collections, the Tailor-made Approach to Faculty Collections programme was launched in 2022. Due to the differences among faculties and collections in terms of their history, content and organisation, the programme prefers tailor-made solutions. The programme runs until the end of 2026.

Since April 2024, the Tailor-made Approach to Faculty Collections team consists of:

Catherine Buckland (registrar EEMCS, AS and AE)
Cormac Duggan (project lead AE, AS and ME)
Liselotte Neervoort (programme manager)
Isabel Sinjorgo (registrar EEMCS, IDE and ABE)
Inge Steijger (process advisor)
Charlotte van Wijk (project lead ABE)
Daphne van Wijngaarden (project lead digital)
Thim Zuidwijk (collection manager Optics, AS)

For more information, please read the article Programme Tailor-Made Approach to Faculty Collections or contact TU Delft Library.

Open data

Built according to the specifications of the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF), this website aims to promote creative reuse of the digital collections. For example, a Manifest Editor developed to curate digital exhibitions has become publicly available. More information about the project and its use of IIIF can be found in the article Reaching into collections to tell stories by Digirati's Technology Director Tom Crane, and in Jules Schoonman's presentation at the IIIF Community Call on 11 March 2020.