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.

General conditions for registration and borrowing (document in french)

• 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 Swiss university library card, a card from the City of Lausanne library or a Renouvaud ELP card: 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, Swiss driving licence or residence permit valid for a minimum of 3 months).

Log in to your user 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 (document in french) or go to one of our desks.

Due to the relocation of our collections, the consultation of archives and heritage objects is unavailable since March 1st 2024. If you have any questions, please feel free to write to us.

Alongside the thousands of works that are freely accessible at our various locations, we have  a collection of cultural heritage documents that are available only in the reading room at the Unithèque site.

Rare, precious, or fragile historical documents are available to you in an environment designed to assure their preservation.

Documents available in the reading room

• manuscripts and archives
• maps
• rare books
• items from the Iconographic collection
• prints  prior to 1850
• UNIL dissertations (Faculty of Arts, Faculty of Geosciences and Environment, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences)

To access these documents you do not have to be registered with the library, but your are requested to fill in – a registration form for the reading room at your first visit( yearly renewal).

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

Don’t have an account? Write to BCUL here for books from 1850 and before ou here for rare and precious books as well as ancient maps

Write to BCUL here for requesting a manuscript or UNIL dissertation.

Write to BCUL here for requesting an item from the Iconographic collection.

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 conditions. An authorization may also be required, particularly for archival material.

To use the reading room you need to book a time slot. Once your order is prepared, we will send you an e-mail to confirm your time slot.

Further information about conditions and copying fees for documents available 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.
• Library users 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, the UNIL Wi-Fi networks or the HEP Vaud Wi-FI network.
• 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 and Blu-ray discs from the Unithèque site
• 7 days: free access newspapers and magazines from the Unithèque site
• You can borrow anything except for documents marked “not available for borrowing” in the Renouvaud search tool (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 returnboxes
• 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 (document in french).

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.

The document you are looking for is not in our collections? Order it and we will obtain it for you from another library outside the Renouvaud network as soon as possible.

You can also request journal articles or book chapters. Due to copyright law, we are prohibited from sending scanned articles directly to individuals. This same law also prohibits the digitization of entire books. We do not send photocopies to private addresses.

Order a document

Log in to Renouvaud, click on All Renouvaud resources plus in the search bar to order documents from swisscovery:

Choose a pick-up location:

Note that BIHM is displayed by default in the drop-down menu Managing library for ILL. Please choose a BCUL site to order your ILL.

• Unithèque
• HEP Vaud
• Riponne: at the top of the form, select BCUL site Unithèque in the drop-down menu Managing library for ILL, then at the bottom of the form, Desired pick-up location BCUL site Riponne
• Internef

Delivered in 3 working days, loanable for 28 days, extendable from the Renouvaud account

Cost: CHF 5.- (Unil students*) or CHF 8.- (other users) per item

* Unil students’ ILL requests cost less because part of the fee is covered by their university. Therefore, a Renouvaud plus order will cost them CHF 5 if picked up at BCUL sites.

All readers (including Unil students) will be invoiced for ILLs not retrieved at the following rates:

• CHF 8.00 (also Unil students) for ILLs ordered in Switzerland;
• Cost price for ILLs ordered abroad.

If the document is not in Renouvaud plus, from Renouvaud, click on ILL Form and fill out the form by checking Book in Reference type.

Order an article

From Renouvaud, click on ILL Form and fill out the form by checking Article in Reference type.

Important information:

• The ILL service is chargeable. Payment is to be made on site, at the time of document collection.
• The loan duration and consultation conditions (loan or on-site consultation, etc.) depend on the owning library.
• A notification of availability will be sent to you by email as soon as the document has arrived. It will be available at the lending desk of Unithèque, HEP Vaud, Riponne, or Internef sites until the expiration date set by the owning library.
• Renewal requests can be made on your account for documents from Renouvaud plus. To renew documents outside Renouvaud plus (Swiss and foreign), please send your requests by email to the Interlibrary Loan service.
• Partner libraries can contact us by email.
• ILLs borrowed from BCUL can be returned at all its sites.
• BCUL accepts returns of documents borrowed from the following Lausanne medical libraries:
  • University Medical Library (BIUM),
  • University Psychiatric Library of Lausanne (BPUL Cery),
  • and the Institute of Humanities in Medicine Library (BIHM).
• However, documents borrowed directly from other libraries must be returned to the same place (e.g., City of Lausanne, Jean Monnet Foundation for Europe, Lausanne gymnasiums, EPFL, swisscovery, etc.)

Access online help: 6. ILL – Interlibrary Loan (at the bottom of the page).

To have a book from the BCU Lausanne collections 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 sent separately.

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 by phone: +41 21 316 78  57 
• how do you become a volunteer? Contact the Mouvement des Aînés Vaud by phone: +41 21 320 12  61