Human and Social Sciences Library Paris Descartes-CNRS
Encyclopedia
Bibliothèque nationale de France
The is the National Library of France, located in Paris. It is intended to be the repository of all that is published in France. The current president of the library is Bruno Racine.-History:...
) as an associated pole (pôle associé) on topics such as health and public policy, Ethics and bioethics, Health sciences and society, drug use and abuse, social psychology.
Being a unité mixte de service (mixed service unit) (UMS 3036), the library both depends of Paris Descartes University (Paris V) and the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). It is located in Saints-Pères street, in the Latin Quarter
Latin Quarter (Paris)
The Latin Quarter of Paris is an area in the 5th and parts of the 6th arrondissement of Paris. It is situated on the left bank of the River Seine, around the Sorbonne....
.
Paris 5 University Human and Social Sciences Libraries
A part comes from the former Human and Social Sciences collections of Paris Descartes University (formerly Paris V University) – the collections of social sciences and linguistics were held in the SorbonneSorbonne
The Sorbonne is an edifice of the Latin Quarter, in Paris, France, which has been the historical house of the former University of Paris...
and those of science education in a library in Saints-Pères street (6th district of Paris). A part of the important linguistics collection come from private libraries of well-known 19th and 20th-century scholars such as Abel Hovelacque, Joseph Vendryes
Joseph Vendryes
Joseph Vendryes was a French-Celtic linguist. After studying with Antoine Meillet, he was chairman of Celtic languages and literature at the École Pratique des Hautes Études. He founded the journal Études Celtiques...
, etc.
CNRS Sociology Library
The main part of the collection comes from the former Sociological Library of the CNRS. The collections increased during the second half of the 20th century. Georges GurvitchGeorges Gurvitch
Georges Gurvitch was a Russian born French sociologist and jurist. One of the leading sociologists of his times, he was a specialist of the sociology of knowledge. In 1944 he founded the journal Cahiers internationaux de Sociologie. He held a chair in sociology at the Sorbonne in Paris.Gurvitch is...
gave books that he had purchased in the USA to the library and Maurice Halbwachs
Maurice Halbwachs
Maurice Halbwachs was a French philosopher and sociologist known for developing the concept of collective memory.Born in Reims, Halbwachs attended the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. There he studied philosophy with Henri Bergson, who influenced him greatly. He aggregated in Philosophy in 1901...
also gave a part of his private library to the Sociological Study Center (Centre d’études sociologiques, CES) just after World War II.
The library, founded by Lucienne Thomas, had the same fate as the CES. First situated in Varenne street (7th arrondissement), it moves Cardinet street (17th arrondissement) in 1959. Its aim is to buy and propose books and knowledge to searchers but also to indicate the resources at a national scale : thus, the library is in charge of the "sociology" section of the Bulletin Signalétique (a kind of bibliography of French science articles) at the beginning of the 70s.
Jacques Lautman, head of CNRS' Human and Society sciences department, decided to change its name in « Bibliothèque de sociologie du CNRS » (CNRS Sociology Library) in 1986. It moved one more time to Pouchet street (next to Cardinet street). Closed for a time while being reorganized, it re-opened in 2004 : it then held 50,000 sociological books and a collection of 1,500 periodicals. In 2006, it became part of the new Human and Social Sciences Library Paris Descartes-CNRS.
The library currently
It is a library reserved for scientific research, mainly for grad students, scholars, social and human scientists from all universities and scientific centers. It possesses a collection of more than 80,000 books and 2,000 periodicals (of which at least 500 subscriptions are running) - add all the electronics periodicals and reviews subscriptions bought by the University Library.
In 2008, the former "Friends of Centre d'Études Sociologiques'Society" (SACES) has entrusted to the library some photographic portraits of sociologists : Raymond Aron, André Davidovitch, Émile Durkheim, Georges Friedmann, Louis Gernet, Alain Girard, Marcel Granet, Georges Gurvitch, Maurice Halbwachs, Robert Hertz,Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, Marcel Mauss, Pierre Naville, Pierre Joseph Proudhon, Jean Stoetzel. The complete collection consists of 15 framed photographs, size 32.5 × 38.5 cm (12.79 × 15.15 in). Part of this collection is available on the open archive MediHAL
But it is also an experimental library for new tool for scientific information circulation in France and abroad. The library plays an important part to digitize French Social Sciences reviews for Persée website (created by French Education Ministry). It also plays a leading role in several national projects of CNRS such as TGE-Adonis and Isore.