KU Leuven is digitising notes taken by students from the 15th to the 18th centuries, offering unique perspectives on student life and the development of science and education

My own notes from university days were never more than a messy heap of papers consisting of snippets of information, usually copied from other, more attentive students. Their historical value is arguably insignificant.

In bygone days, and especially at places like the University of Leuven (KU Leuven), it was a completely different affair, with students binding their handwritten lecture notes into books, spanning at times more than 400 pages.

Over the centuries, some of these notebooks were preserved in the school’s archives, and many of them date back to the days of the “Old University”, the period between KU Leuven’s founding in 1425 and its forced closure by the French government in 1797.

“Because they were taken by students, these notes may not present much value as physical artefacts, but their historical significance should not be underestimated,” says Marleen Reynders, the manager of the digitisation project Magister Dixit. “We are fortunate that many of these bundles were preserved.”

The project aims to digitise the notes – which are part of the collections of KU Leuven, the Catholic University of Louvain and the Royal Library of Belgium – and make them available to researchers. The documents, Reynders explains, will allow researchers to see how lecturers viewed new and developing ideas and how this translated into their teaching.