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 will be unavailable from March 1st until further notice. 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Rare, precious, or fragile historical documents are available to you in an environment designed to assure their preservation.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.

Preparation times for document requests

Books, articles or even book chapters from other libraries can be ordered via our interlibrary loan department. Please be advised that a fee will be charged for this service.

The document you are looking for is not in our collections? Order it and we will bring it to 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 not allowed to send scans of articles directly to a user. The same law also prohibits the scanning of entire books. And we do not send photocopies to your home.

Order a document

log in to Renouvaud, in the search toolbar click on All Resources Renouvaud plus to order swisscovery documents:

choose a pick-up location :

> Unithèque

> HEP Vaud

> Riponne

> Internef

delivered in 3 working days, can be borrowed for 28 days, cost CHF 8.-

• If the document is not in Renouvaud plus, from Renouvaud, click on ILL form and fill the form by ticking Book in Citation type.

• Documents from Lausanne librairies (HES librairies, University Psychiatric Library, etc.) cannot be ordered through The Interlibrary Loan service. Borrow them directly from owner librairies.

Order an article

• From Renouvaud, click on ILL form and fill the form by ticking Article in Citation type.

Important informations

• There is a charge for this service. The payement is required on location, when the document is retrieved.
• The duration of the loan and the conditions of consultation (borrowing or consulting on location, etc.) depend on the owner’s library.
• A notice of availability will be sent to you by mail as soon as the document has been received. It remains available at the loan desk of the Unithèque, HEP Vaud, Riponne, or Internef sites for seven days.
• Requests for extensions have to be processed on your account for documents from Renouvaud plus. To extend 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.

Access to the video tutorial.

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