Room L - History

Salle L © Thierry Ardouin / Tendance Floue / BnF

Reading Room L is dedicated to History, Prehistory and Archeology. You have free access to monographes and periodicals on those fields, as well as for France as for the rest of the world. A small space gathers reference documents and sources on the history of France.

Collections

General information
Dictionaries, atlases, etc.
History
The History collections consist of reference research works, in French and foreign languages. You have access to general books (dictionaries, sources etc.), to classics of historiography as well as to monographs illustrating the latest state of contemporary historic research.The collection focuses on French history without forgetting the rest of the world. Obviously, historiography occupies an important space.
Archeology, ancient history and prehistory
The Archeology and Prehistory collections consist of reference research works, in French and foreign languages, illustrating the latest state of historic research. Concerning Archeology, the collections focus on the Greek and Latin worlds, the Gaul, Egypt, Near and Middle East. The Ancien History collections are mainly consituted of sources : works by greek and latin historians, in french and bilingual versions. The Prehistory collections cover all fields : the evolution of mankind and society, prehistoric art, religions of prehistory and paleolithic environment. The methodology and history of this field are also represented.
Auxiliary Sciences
Room L presents an ensemble of resources on genealogy, epigraphy, heraldry, paleography and numimatics, completing adventageously the collections.
Periodicals
For better visibility, the periodicals on the fields covered in Room L are shelved on one side of the room. Since the collections focus on the latest research, only the last years are freely available.

Services offered

Help on documenteray research and the utilisation of the collections, on paper or electronic resources (at the librarian’s desk).

Noteworthy Collections

The space dedicated to the sources of French history regroups numerous dictionaries, necessary to begin any research on French history. Catalogs, repertoires, bibliographies and other corpora of sources form a coherent ensemble, easy to identify by researchers. Here you may find for example La Bibliographie annuelle de l’histoire de France or the Catalogue des actes royaux.