Dr Lotte Hellinga was born and educated in Amsterdam. She was lecturer, later Senior lecturer at the University of Amsterdam where she taught textual bibliography. In 1976 she was appointed as a member of staff of the British Library, from 1985 in charge of the incunabula, and she became Deputy Keeper in 1988. She fulfilled a number of administrative duties, including taking part in the Report on Acquisition and Retention policies, which was published in 1989, and the Acting Directorship of the Preservation Service (1989-91). She retired from the British Library in 1995, but had by then become involved in the development of the Consortium of European Research Libraries, which had been constituted in 1992. She became formally its Secretary in 1994, and stepped down from this function in 2002. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and a Correspondent of the Netherlands Academy of Sciences.
Lotte Hellinga is specialised in early printing, with interests ranging from detailed studies of textual bibliography of early printing and the transition of manuscript to print, early printing types, book-trade and readership, to bibliographical control of early materials through databases. The British Library enabled her to initiate the ISTC database of incunabula of which she was the first editor, as well as related projects, The Illustrated ISTC and the microfiche project The printing revolution in Europe. The core of her interests is, however, scholarly. From 1960 until his death in 1985 she published regularly with her husband Wytze Hellinga. Their joint publications include The fifteenth-century printing types of the Low Countries, Amsterdam, 1966. Her other publications include: Caxton in focus, the beginning of printing in England, London, 1982. She edited Charles Enschedé, The Typefoundries of the Netherlands, translated by Harry Carter, Haarlem, 1978, and jointly with J B Trapp vol. III of The Cambridge history of the book in Britain, Cambridge, 1999, to which she also contributed. She published in a variety of languages around 170 articles and contributions to volumes regarding the history of the book and early printing. Her most recent publication is a collection of translated essays, published by the Instituto de Historia del Libro y de la Lectura in Salamanca, the title of which fairly covers many of her interests: Impresores, editores, correctores y cajistas del siglo XV.