Bibliothèque nationale de France
National Library of France | |
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Bibliothèque nationale de France | |
Size | 42M items including 16M books, 410,000 journals, 950,000 maps, 2M music sheets. 48B web archives equivalent to 1,800 terabytes [2] |
Access and use | |
Access requirements | Open to anyone with a need to use the collections and services |
Other information | |
Budget | €254 million[2] |
Director | Laurence Engel |
Employees | 2,300 |
Website | bnf.fr (in French) |
The Bibliothèque nationale de France (French: [biblijɔtɛk nɑsjɔnal də fʁɑ̃s]; 'National Library of France'; BnF) is the national library of France, located in Paris on two main sites known respectively as Richelieu and François-Mitterrand. It is the national repository of all that is published in France. Some of its extensive collections, including books and manuscripts but also precious objects and artworks, are on display at the BnF Museum (formerly known as the Cabinet des Médailles) on the Richelieu site.
The National Library of France is a public establishment under the supervision of the Ministry of Culture. Its mission is to constitute collections, especially the copies of works published in France that must, by law, be deposited there, conserve them, and make them available to the public. It produces a reference catalogue, cooperates with other national and international establishments, as well as participates in research programs.
History
The National Library of France traces its origin to the royal library founded at the
Under librarianship of
The site in the Rue de la Harpe becoming inadequate, the library was again moved, in 1666, to two adjacent houses in Rue Vivienne. After Colbert, Louis XIV's minister Louvois also took interest in the library and employed Jean Mabillon, Melchisédech Thévenot, and others to procure books from every source. In 1688, a catalogue in eight volumes was compiled.[4] Louvois considered the erection of an opulent building to host it on what would become the Place Vendôme, a project that was however left unexecuted following the minister's death in 1691.
The library opened to the public in 1692, under the administration of Abbott
The library's collections swelled to over 300,000 volumes during the radical phase of the French Revolution when the private libraries of aristocrats and clergy were seized. After the establishment of the French First Republic in September 1792, "the Assembly declared the Bibliothèque du Roi to be national property and the institution was renamed the Bibliothèque Nationale. After four centuries of control by the Crown, this great library now became the property of the French people."[3]
A new administrative organization was established. Napoleon took great interest in the library and among other things issued an order that all books in provincial libraries not possessed by the Bibliothèque Nationale should be forwarded to it, subject to replacement by exchanges of equal value from the duplicate collections, making it possible, as Napoleon said, to find a copy of any book in France in the National Library. Napoleon furthermore increased the collections by spoil from his conquests. A considerable number of these books were restored after his downfall. During the period from 1800 to 1836, the library was virtually under the control of Joseph Van Praet. At his death it contained more than 650,000 printed books and some 80,000 manuscripts.[4]
Following a series of regime changes in France, it became the Imperial National Library and in 1868 was moved to newly constructed buildings on the Rue de Richelieu designed by Henri Labrouste. Upon Labrouste's death in 1875 the library was further expanded, including the grand staircase and the Oval Room, by academic architect Jean-Louis Pascal. In 1896, the library was still the largest repository of books in the world, although it has since been surpassed by other libraries for that title.[7] By 1920, the library's collection had grown to 4,050,000 volumes and 11,000 manuscripts.[4]
In 2024, the library removed four 19th century books from its public access, namely two volumes of The Ballads of Ireland published in 1855, a bilingual anthology of Romanian poetry dating from 1856, and book of the Royal Horticultural Society published between 1862 and 1863, after tests indicated that their covers and bindings were colored using green pigments containing arsenic.[8]
Richelieu site
The Richelieu site occupies a full city block in Paris, surrounded by rue de Richelieu (west), rue des Petits-Champs (south), rue Vivienne (east), and rue Colbert (north). There are two entrances, respectively on 58, rue de Richelieu and 5, rue Vivienne. This site was the main location of the library for 275 years, from 1721 to 1996. It now hosts the BnF Museum as well as facilities of the BnF, the library of the Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art (in the Saller Labrouste since 2016), and the library of the École Nationale des Chartes. It was comprehensively renovated in the 2010s and early 2020s on a design by architects Bruno Gaudin and Virginie Brégal.
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Façade on rue de Richelieu
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Main courtyard (Cour d'honneur)
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Courtyard of former Hôtel Tubeuf, on rue des Petits-Champs
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Garden bordering rue Vivienne
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Salle Labrouste
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Salle Ovale
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BnF Museum, salle des Colonnes
François-Mitterrand site
On 14 July 1988, President François Mitterrand announced "the construction and the expansion of one of the largest and most modern libraries in the world, intended to cover all fields of knowledge, and designed to be accessible to all, using the most modern data transfer technologies, which could be consulted from a distance, and which would collaborate with other European libraries". Due to initial trade union opposition, a wireless network was fully installed only in August 2016.
In July 1989, the services of the architectural firm of Dominique Perrault were retained. The design was recognized with the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture in 1996. The construction was carried out by Bouygues.[9] Construction of the library ran into huge cost overruns and technical difficulties related to its high-rise design, so much so that it was referred to as the "TGB" or "Très Grande Bibliothèque" (i.e. "Very Large Library", a sarcastic allusion to France's successful high-speed rail system, the TGV).[10] After the move of the major collections from the Rue de Richelieu, the National Library of France was inaugurated on 15 December 1996.[11]
As of 2016[update], the BnF contained roughly 14 million books at its four Parisian sites (
Located near the Bibliothèque François Mitterrand .
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Manuscript collection
The Manuscripts department houses the largest collection of medieval and modern manuscripts worldwide. The collection includes medieval
- according to language (Hebrew, Persian, Turkish, Near- and Middle-Eastern languages, Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, Sanskrit, Tamil, Indian languages, Vietnamese, etc.)
- The library holds about 5,000 Ancient Greek manuscripts, which are divided into three fonds: Ancien fonds grec, fonds Coislin, and Fonds du Supplément grec.[13]
- according to content: learned and bibliophilic, collections of learned materials, Library Archives, genealogical collections, French provinces, Masonic collection, etc.
Digital library
Gallica[14] is the digital library for online users of the Bibliothèque nationale de France and its partners. It was established in October 1997. Today it has more than six million digitized materials of various types: books, magazines, newspapers, photographs, cartoons, drawings, prints, posters, maps, manuscripts, antique coins, scores, theater costumes and sets, audio and video materials. All library materials are freely available.
On 10 February 2010, a digitized copy of Scenes of Bohemian Life by Henri Murger (1913) became Gallica's millionth document. And in February 2019, the five millionth document was a copy of the manuscript "Record of an Unsuccessful Trip to the West Indies" stored in the Bibliothèque Inguimbertine.
As of 1 January 2020[update], Gallica had made available online approximately:
- 6 million documents
- 690,311 books
- 176,341 maps
- 144,859 manuscripts
- 1,468,952 images
- 3,968,841 newspapers and magazines
- 51,055 sheets of music
- 51,170 audio recordings
- 510,807 objects
- 1,705 video recordings
Most of Gallica's collections have been converted into text format using optical character recognition (OCR-processing), which allows full-text search in the library materials.
Each document has a digital identifier, the so-called ARK (Archival Resource Key) of the National Library of France and is accompanied by a bibliographic description.
List of directors
1369–1792
- 1369–1411: Gilles Mallet (fr)
- 1522–1540: Guillaume Budé
- 1540–1552: Pierre Duchâtel
- 1552–1567: Pierre de Montdoré
- 1567–1593: Jacques Amyot
- 1593–1617: Jacques-Auguste de Thou
- 1617–1642: François Auguste de Thou
- 1642–1656: Jérôme Bignon
- 1656–1684: Jérôme II Bignon
- 1560–1604: Jean Gosselin
- 1604–1614: Isaac Casaubon
- 1614–1645: Nicolas Rigault
- 1645–1651: Pierre Dupuy
- 1651–1656: Jacques Dupuy
- 1656–1676: Nicolas Colbert ; Pierre de Carcavi (1663-1683)
- 1676–1684: Louis Colbert ; Melchisédech Thévenot (1684-1691)
- 1684–1718: Camille Le Tellier de Louvois; Nicolas Clément] (1691-1712)
- 1719–1741: Jean-Paul Bignon
- 1741–1743: Jérôme Bignon de Blanzy
- 1743–1772: Armand-Jérôme Bignon
- 1770–1784: Jérôme-Frédéric Bignon ; Grégoire Desaunays (from 1775 to 1793)
- 1784–1789: Jean-Charles-Pierre Le Noir (démission)
- 1789–1792: Louis Le Fèvre d'Ormesson de Noyseau
1792–present
- 1792–1793: Sébastien-Roch Nicolas de Chamfort (fr)
- 1793: Jean-Baptiste Cœuilhe (interim)
- 1793–1795: Jean Baptiste Lefebvre de Villebrune
- 1795–1796: André Barthélemy de Courcay
- 1796–1798: Jean-Augustin Capperonnier
- 1798–1799: Adrien-Jacques Joly
- 1799–1800: Aubin-Louis Millin de Grandmaison
- 1800–1803: Jean-Augustin Capperonnier
- 1803–1806: Pascal-François-Joseph Gossellin
- 1806–1829: Bon-Joseph Dacier
- 1830–1831: Joseph Van Praet
- 1832: Joseph Van Praet
- 1832: Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat
- 1832–1837: Jean-Antoine Letronne
- 1838–1839: Edmé François Jomard
- 1839: Charles Dunoyer
- 1839–1840: Antoine Jean Letronne
- 1840–1858: Joseph Naudet
- 1858–1874: Jules-Antoine Taschereau ; the Paris Commune appointed Élie Reclus (29 April to 24 May 1871)
- 1874–1905: Léopold Delisle
- 1905–1913: Henry Marcel
- 1913–1923: Théophile Homolle
- 1923–1930: Pierre-René Roland-Marcel
- 1930–1940: Julien Cain
- 1940–1944: Bernard Faÿ
- 1944–1945: Jean Laran (interim)
- 1945–1964: Julien Cain
- 1964–1975: Étienne Dennery
- 1975–1981: Georges Le Rider
- 1981–1984: Alain Gourdon
- 1984–1987: André Miquel
- 1987–1993: Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie
- 1989–1994: Dominique Jamet
- 1994–1997: Jean Favier
- 1997–2002: Jean-Pierre Angremy
- 2002–2007: Jean-Noël Jeanneney
- 2007–2016: Bruno Racine
- 2016–present: Laurence Engel
Notable patrons
Raoul Rigault, leader during the Paris Commune, was known for habitually occupying the library and reading endless copies of the newspaper Le Père Duchesne.[15]
In popular culture
Alain Resnais directed Toute la mémoire du monde (transl. All the Memory in the World), a 1956 short film about the library and its collections.
See also
- Enfer, a department within the BnF
- Legal deposit
- Books in France
- BnF, Mélanges de Colbert 60
- Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal
- Bibliothèque-Musée de l'Opéra National de Paris
- National electronic library
- Dossiers Secrets d'Henri Lobineau
- Project Blinkenlights
References
- ^ Jack A. Clarke. "French Libraries in Transition, 1789–95." The Library Quarterly, Vol. 37, No. 4 (Oct., 1967)
- ^ a b "La BnF en chiffres". Archived from the original on 2023-09-11.
- ^ JSTOR 25541320.
- ^ a b c d e f g This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rines, George Edwin, ed. (1920). . Encyclopedia Americana.
- ^ Lombard-Jourdan, Anne (July–December 1981). "A PROPOS DE RAOUL DE PRESLES DOCUMENTS SUR L'HOMME". Bibliothèque de l'École des chartes. 139 (2): 191–207.
- ISBN 978-1-58456-182-8
- ^ Dunton, Larkin (1896). The World and Its People. Silver, Burdett. p. 38.
- ^ "French national library quarantines 'poisonous' books". France 24. 25 April 2024.
- ^ "Bouygues website: Bibliothèque nationale de France". Archived from the original on November 27, 2006.
- ^ Fitchett, Joseph (30 March 1995). "New Paris Library: Visionary or Outdated?". The New York Times. Retrieved 10 April 2013.
- ISBN 978-1-57181-082-3. Retrieved 21 May 2011.
- ^ "Welcome to the BnF". BnF (Bibliothèque nationale de France). Archived from the original on 25 January 2016. Retrieved 17 January 2016.
- ^ See the Tome III-1 link: http://editions.bnf.fr/catalogue-des-manuscrits-grecs-iii-1-supplément-grec-n°-1-à-150. The Tome III-2 is not listed on the site. The Tome III-3 link: http://editions.bnf.fr/catalogue-des-manuscrits-grecs-iii-3-supplément-grec-n°-901-1371
- ^ Website link is https://gallica.bnf.fr/accueil/en/content/accueil-en
- ^ Horne, Alistair (1965). The Fall of Paris: The Siege and the Commune 1870-1. St. Martin's Press, New York. pp. 29–30.
Further reading
- Bibliothèque nationale (France), Département de la Phonothèque nationale et de l'Audiovisuel. The National [Sound] Record[ings] and Audiovisual Department of the National Library [of France]. [Paris]: Bibliothèque nationale, [1986]. 9 p.
- David H. Stam, ed. (2001). International Dictionary of Library Histories. Fitzroy Dearborn. ISBN 1-57958-244-3.
- Riding, Alan. "France Detects a Cultural Threat in Google," The New York Times. April 11, 2005.