Digitization programs

France in America

Five centuries of relationships between France and America

This program traces five centuries of relationships between France and America, from French exploration in the 16th century and settlement attempts in the early modern period to cultural and economic relations in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Illustrated French incunabula

Illustrated incunabula from BnF’s Rare Books Reserve (Réserve des livres rares)

Miroir de la rédemption de l'humain lignage. 1479.

© BnF, Rare Books Reserve

Digitization of 600 incunabula from collections held in the Rare Books Reserve, illustrated with wood engravings.
Dual access is planned:

• access to complete documents via Gallica
• iconographic access via the Icono15 database created by the Reserve Department, which catalogs and describes all illustrations.

Baroque literature around the Astrée

Honoré d’Urfé’s L’Astrée: a 5,000 page 17th century pastoral novel (1607-1628)

Honoré d'Urfé : portrait

© BnF, Prints and Photographs Dept.

Digitization of the Antoine de Sommaville edition:

• A digitized version in image format, created from the copy held by the Auxerre public library, will soon be available.
• This will eventually be supplemented by a text format version and a genetic study of the text carried out by a team of researchers from the University of Paris IV.

As this foundational text in French literary history becomes available, a selection of novels, critical studies, and contemporary documents placing the Astrée back in its literary and historical context will be digitized.

Bibliographical libraries

Selection of 50 bibliographical reference books, intended to supplement Gallica’s bibliographical collection.

Workers’ movement

Reports on the workers’ movement between 1870 and 1940

This program aims to exhaustively digitize all reports on the workers’ movement between 1870 and 1940. The program covers 70 years of political and trade union life, and will eventually be accessible via Gallica and the workers’ movement database, available via the CODHOS website.

Learned societies

19th century regional publications by learned societies

The 19th century saw the rise of learned societies committed to describing archeological and scientific discoveries and historical and literary events. These publications, which are essential to any understanding of regional heritage and the history of 19th century scholarship, are covered on a region-by-region basis.

Archeology symposium at the Château de Bourdeilles (Dordogne). 1928.

© BnF

Partnership

Libraries, archive centers, and regional cooperation agencies

Available for consultation online

An initial tranche covering the following:

• Aquitaine
• Lorraine

Currently being digitized

• Brittany
• Poitou-Charente
• Burgundy
• Limousin

Art history periodicals

Moorish women of Constantine Etching by Théodore Chassériau – L’Artiste, 1851

© BnF, Art and Literature Dept.

Available for consultation online

• l'Artiste
  Editions from 1831 to 1904 are online (with the exception of 1900, 1902, and 1903)

Under development

• Chroniques des arts et de la curiosité
• Annuaire de la Gazette des Beaux-Arts
• l'Estampe et l'affiche

Trench newspapers

French First World War trench newspapers

Digitization of French trench newspapers, held by the Library of Contemporary International Documentation (Bibliothèque de Documentation Internationale Contemporaine/BDIC) in Nanterre and the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
Published on the front lines by First World War combat units, these newspapers, which are extremely fragile and had a short life span, provide an irreplaceable account of what daily life was like for the poilus.

Patronage of the Dunhuang collection

Compendium of ancient Minghuashuanguan seals.

© BnF, Eastern Manuscripts Dept.

Within the framework of a partnership with the Mellon Foundation, BnF has committed to providing the Foundation with digital images taken from original Dunhuang manuscripts, xylographies, and paintings held in its collections (the Pelliot collection from central Asia).

All documents will have been processed by the end of 2009.

Gaignières collection

Pictures of costumes, tombstones, stained-glass windows, tapestries and seals, and views of cities and monuments

Bust portrait of Louis II of Anjou, King of Sicily. 17th century.

© BnF, Prints and Photographs Dept.

Digitization of drawings from the François-Roger de Gaignières collection (1644-1715), held by BnF’s Prints and Photographs and Manuscripts departments.

Les Archives de la parole

Recorded phonographic heritage 1911-1928

Les Archives de la parole inaugural speech. 1911.

© BnF, Audiovisual Dept.

Created in 1911 by grammarian and French language historian Ferdinand Brunot, the Archives de la parole were set up to record oral expressions of spoken language and preserve them for future generation.

Gilles Deleuze collection

Recordings of 400 hours of lectures and a dozen hours of video.

The Audiovisual Department’s Deleuze corpus (177 volumes) comprises 400 hours of lectures given by philosopher Gilles Deleuze between 1979 and 1984 at the University of Paris VIII Vincennes (subsequently Saint-Denis), as well as dozen hours of video recordings.

Thirty hours’ worth of material is in the process of being digitized. These lectures, which were recorded by a student, are of philosophical interest since they show thought processes unfolding, and provide historical and sociological insight into the prevailing psyche at a time when Gilles Deleuze was a key figure.

Recorded music

Baroque music corpus

Digitization of the first musical recordings published in France. The emphasis will be on baroque music, which was rediscovered very early in France, at the beginning of the 20th century.