Practical information
Reading room
The reading room is open to all visitors from Mondays to Fridays between 9 am and 4 pm. Works in the reading room may be consulted immediately by readers and are categorised into around 30 topics.
Topics 1 to 9 are general subject areas (reference works)
1. Magazines
2. Encyclopaedias
3. Dictionaries
4. Manuals, lexicons, quick reference works
5. Atlases
6. Biographies
7. Bibliographies
8. Telephone directories
9. Ideas
Topics 10-19 offer visitors recent publications or major works on each country. The topics here are categorised into major geographical areas, with individual countries listed alphabetically inside each one.
Topics 21 to 30 are specific to the mission of the FPS Foreign Affairs, having to do with foreign policy.
20. Diplomacy as a career
21. International organisations and supranational institutions
22. European integration
23. International politics
24. International economic relations
25. Human rights
26. Private international law
27. Public international law
28. National legislation (by country)
30. Colonial law
Books stored by the library are administered by staff at the counter in the reading room. Visitors must fill out a loan form to consult them, citing the relevant section of the library and the work’s classification mark.
Visitors can choose from around 700,000 volumes, stored in 13 locations with 14 km of shelf space, so filling in loan applications correctly is essential to help staff locate a book or magazine quickly.
Here are a few statistics:
Diplomatic Section: 255,000 volumes
African Section: 235,000 volumes
Legal Section: 200,000 volumes
Development Cooperation Section: 15,000 volumes
Reading room: 15,000 volumes
Services on offer
All books, magazines and magazine articles may be free consulted by anyone in the reading room.
Photocopies
Photocopies cost €0.10 each, but users must purchase a card for 25 copies (costing €2.50). Copies of precious or ancient books are only available with the librarian’s approval.
Digital photos
You may take digital photos free of charge.
Research assistance
A number of librarians are at your service to help you locate a work or guide you when you decide to extend or expand the scope of your research.
Online catalogue
The online catalogue contains some 380,000 bibliographical references to books, magazines or magazine articles.
Searches can be effected by author, title (or one or more words contained in it), full bibliographical note, keyword(s) or, in the Legal Section, specific keywords.
NB: The majority of works comprising the former Colonial/African Library are not listed in the online catalogue, having been acquired before 1975.
Reserving books
You can reserve books by e-mail and have them brought to the reading room so that you can start researching immediately upon arrival. If you reserve books three days in advance, we will be able to alert you when the requested works are available.
Opening hours
Mondays to Fridays, 9 am to 4 pm.
Address
Federal Public Service Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation
Service P&C 2 - Library
Rue des Petits Carmes 15
1000 Brussels
BELGIUM
The library is close to the metro station Porte de Namur/Naamsepoort and 10 minutes away from Brussels-Central railway station.
Useful telephone numbers
Only for questions regarding the library! For other questions: +32 (0)2 501 8111.
Diplomatic Section: +32 (0)2 501 8111
African Section: +32 (0)2 501 8098
Legal Section: +32 (0)2 501 3554
Development Cooperation Section: +32 (0)2 501 3929
Reading room +32 2 501 8146
Chief librarian: +32 2 501 3929
Fax
+32 2 501 3736
E-mail contacts
biblio@diplobel.fed.be (general library address)
michel.erkens@diplobel.fed.be (library contact person)
To consult the catalogue shared by all federal institutions, see www.bib.belgium.be, which contains a database of around 4 million bibliographical descriptions.
