Borrowing and reading

• you are at least 14 years old
• you live in Switzerland
• you are a student, teacher or employee at UNIL, EPFL, HEP Vaud, or one of the gymnasia (secondary schools) in Provence or Renens
• you are a Swiss citizen living abroad
• you are a cross-border worker working in the canton of Vaud

If you are under the age of 14, please contact us to request an exemption.

• student, assistant, PhD student or professor: come to one of our desks to validate your campus card, which will act as your library card
• holder of a RERO, Nebis or BiblioPass library card or a card from a City of Lausanne library: complete the pre-registration form and then validate your card at one of our desks

 If you do not have any kind of library card, please complete the pre-registration form. To obtain your library card, go to one of the BCUL desks with a valid identity document (Swiss identity card, Swiss passport, residence permit valid for a minimum of 3 months or Swiss driving licence).

Log in to your account to:

• renew your loans
• manage your loan requests
• check when your loans are due back
• update your personal details

If you have forgotten your password, ask to update it [Lien sur pdf mot de passe] or go to one of our desks.

Alongside the thousands of works that are freely accessible at our various locations, we have a collection of valuable documents that are available only in the reading room [lien vers la page horaires, ancrage sur salle de consultation Unithèque]at our Unithèque site.

Rare, precious, valuable or fragile historical documents are available to you in an environment designed to help conserve them.

Documents available to read only

• manuscripts
• old maps
• rare and precious works
• illustrated documents
• works prior to 1850
• UNIL dissertations (Faculty of Arts, Faculty of Geosciences and Environment, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences)

Anyone with an interest in them can consult these items. You do not have to be registered with the library. Please fill out the registration form when you first visit. You will have to renew once a year.

Requesting a document from prior to 1850, a rare or precious work or an old map: once you have found the document in Renouvaud, log into your account, and click on the “Request” button. 

Don’t have an account? Write to info-Dorigny@bcu.unil.ch (works prior to 1850) or consultation@bcu.unil.ch (rare and precious works, and old maps)

Requesting a manuscript or UNIL dissertation: write to consultation@bcu.unil.ch

Requesting an illustrated document: write to iconographie@bcu.unil.ch

Depending on the type of document, it can take between 1 hour and 2 working days to prepare your order. Reading restrictions apply to certain documents because of their conservation condition. An authorization request may also be required, particularly for dissertations.

Full information about conditions and copying fees  [lien vers la page Service des Manuscrits/bloc numérisation] for documents in the reading room.

• as a student or employee at UNIL, CHUV or HEP Vaud, you have access to all the digital resources in the Renouvaud catalogue marked as [Access UNIL; CHUV; HEP Vaud; BCUL sites]. Items can be accessed locally (through your institution’s computer network) or remotely through your institution’s VPN.
• if you are outside UNIL, CHUV or HEP Vaud, you have access to the digital resources in the Renouvaud catalogue marked as [Access UNIL; CHUV; HEP Vaud; BCUL sites]. You can access materials at our various locations, from the public computers or the UNIL Wi-Fi networks.
• some resources in the Renouvaud catalogue identified as [Free access] are accessible to anyone, from any location

Full conditions of access and restrictions on use of our digital resources.

You can borrow up to 30 documents at a time. There are special conditions for UNIL professors, researchers and PhD students.

Loan period

• standard loan: 28 days
• 14 days: DVDs from the Riponne, HEP Vaud, Renens and Provence sites, DVD documentaries, box sets and series from the Unithèque site and magazines from the Riponne site
• 7 days: free access newspapers and magazines from the Unithèque site, and DVDs and Blu-ray discs from the Cinespace at the Unithèque site
• You can borrow anything except for documents marked “not available for borrowing” in the catalogue Renouvaud (reference works, old and precious books, compilations of legislation and case law, etc.)

Renewals

• renew your documents in a few clicks from your account
• items cannot be renewed if they have been reserved by another reader
• online renewals are available for a maximum of 4 times the initial loan period. Once this period has expired, please return your items to the desk.

Returns

• to the desk at all locations
• to the returns cabinets
• by post

A fine of CHF 0.20 per working day for each document is payable from the first day of delay on any late returns. Any costs incurred as a result of damage or loss of a document, including administrative expenses, will be payable by the user in full. For any transactions involving a third party, please complete the proxy form.

The following documents must also be returned to one of our locations:

• books obtained through the interlibrary loans service (PEB)
• books borrowed from Lausanne medical libraries

If the document is available free access, you can find it yourself and borrow it. If the document is available from the stacks, at another site or has already been borrowed, log in to Renouvaud and click on “Request”. As soon as the document is available, you will receive an email inviting you to collect it from your chosen location.

Preparation times for document requests

Is the book you are looking for not in our collections? We can order it from another library for you as soon as possible. You can also request journal articles or book chapters.

Order a document

• log in to Renouvaud, click on the PEB tab and fill out the form
• documents from Lausanne libraries (HES libraries, the university medical library, university psychiatric library, Institute of Humanities in Medicine library, etc.) cannot be ordered through the interlibrary loans service. These must be borrowed directly from their holding libraries.

Important information

• A fee is charged for this service. Payment must be made in person when you collect the document.
• loan periods and conditions of use (e.g. whether the document can be borrowed or only read on site) depend on the holding library
• we will let you know that the document is available as soon as it reaches us. It will be available for you to collect from the desk at the Unithèque or Riponne sites until the expiry date set by the holding library.
• a fee of CHF 10.- is payable for any uncollected items

renewal requests must be sent to the inter-library loans service peb@bcu.unil.ch.

To have a book sent to your home, once you have found the document in Renouvaud, log in, click on the “Request” button and and select “Postal delivery: home address” or “Postal delivery: work address”. The item will be sent to you by post for a fee of CHF 13 per volume

Before you use the loans by post service,

• check that the address on your account is correct
• pay any outstanding fees and fines

Delivery

• we only deliver within Switzerland
• items are sent by second-class post (± 2 days)

Returns

• when your item is due to expire, return it by post to the BCUL Unithèque in appropriate packaging
• return costs are payable by you

Payment

• fees for sending items to you will be added to your account

these must be paid using the payment slip attached to the package

Is it difficult for you to travel? The “Livres à vous” service offers you free home delivery. A volunteer will bring your items to your home and return them for you.

• sign up for the “Livres à vous” service

People with reduced mobility living in the Greater Lausanne area

• how do sign up for the service? Contact us at: info-riponne@bcu.unil.ch, or on +41 21 316 78  57 
• how do you become a volunteer? Contact the Mouvement des Aînés Vaud: info-riponne@bcu.unil.ch, or on +41 21 320 12  61