BnF National Library of France

History of the National Library of France, first the Royal Library, then the National Library and the National Library, the National Library of France (BnF), since 1994 called the National Library of France, today the National Library of the French Republic. It inherits the royal collections built up since the late Middle Ages and is one of the oldest cultural institutions in France.

“The mission of the BnF is to collect, catalogue, preserve, enrich and disseminate the national documentary heritage. The BnF ensures that the collections are accessible to as many people as possible, both on-site and remotely, and develops national and international collaborations. »

Libraries of Kings and Scholars

In 1368, Charles V housed his collection in a specially designed room in the Louvre: about ten years later, it contained more than 900 volumes. This was the beginning of a tradition that the kings of France were keen to maintain.

Francois I on 28 December 1537 On 16th, a decree was issued that introduced a new principle. He ordered printers and booksellers to deposit any printed books sold in the kingdom in their bookshops at the Château de Blois.

This obligation, called legal deposit, was a fundamental step for the Royal Library. It was brought back to Paris in the second half of the 16th century and survived the Wars of Religion, but not without damage.

In 1666, the library experienced a real development under the leadership of Colbert, whose ambition was to make it an instrument of glory for Louis XIV. He established it in the Vivienne Quarter and led an aggressive policy of increasing the collection, doubling the number of manuscripts and quadrupling the number of printed books.

Open to the public

In just a few decades, the library occupied the first position in Europe. In 1719, Abbot Bignon Appointed librarian by the king, he brought the library to an unprecedented splendor.
He divided it into several sections: engravings, manuscripts, medals and engraved stones, engravings, and collections of prints, titles and genealogies. He also continued the work of his predecessors in the acquisition of documents, and was very keen to include all the important works of European scholarship.

Abbot Bignon also worked to facilitate access to the library for scholars and the simply curious. At the end of the 18th century, nearly a hundred people visited the library's reading room every day. Borrowing records show that encyclopedists including Voltaire and Rousseau often visited there.

Revolutionary Turmoil

The French Revolution had a profound impact on the library. Legal deposit was removed in July 1790 and selectively restored three years later under the Copyright Act of July 19, 1793 (until 1810). 1860).

However, the King's Library, which had become the National Library, greatly increased its funds during this period, thanks to the arrival of hundreds of thousands of confiscated or seized documents.

The property of the clergy, distributed between museums and libraries and the libraries of emigrants or of Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and Madame Elisabeth, enriched the national collection.

The library also benefited from the seizures of Napoleon's troops in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Italy. This is evidenced, for example, by the letters of Father Le Brun, librarian of the army, who was in charge of scientific and artistic searches in the northern countries with a group of scholars:

We made a great discovery in Cologne. Twenty-five boxes of books... That's what the ancient town of Ubiens offered to the Republic.

Modernization efforts in the 19th century

The problem of insufficient library space was made worse by the large number of documents that entered as a result of the revolutionary confiscations. The first half of the 19th century was a long period of trial and error in this regard.

In 1858, a commission headed by Prosper Mérimée prepared a report on the reform of the organization of the Imperial Library. Napoleon III partially adopted his conclusions, commissioning the architect Henri Labrouste to rebuild parts of the building on site. His name is especially associated with the construction of the Print Reading Room (1868), in which the use of cast iron triumphed.
This renaissance was continued by the medievalist Léopold Delisle, who was appointed General Administrator in 1874. He initiated the production of the General Catalogue of Printed Books, the first volume of which was published in 1897 and the last (for works entered before 1960) in 1981. .
Throughout the second half of the century, a series of exceptional donations were added to the fund: the Duke of Rouen’s collection of antique vases and coins in 1862, the collections of Bourges (1854) and Henning (1863), and even the manuscripts of Victor Hugo.

Expanding Collections and Growing Audience

In the 20th century, the library continued to expand, with the number of reading rooms increasing from 6 between 1930 and 1964 to 11. In parallel, three annexes were built in Versailles in 1934, 1954 and 1971, one in Sablé in 1980 and another in Provence in 1981. However, these extensions were not enough to solve the storage problem due to the explosive growth of print production.
The growing number of collections and the arrival of new media, especially audiovisual, brought increasingly acute conservation problems. The places available for readers were already insufficient. Despite the modernization and computerization efforts made by the institution in the 1980s, it was difficult to adapt to the new conditions of print production and reading needs.

The birth of the National Bank of France

Faced with the difficulties brought about by the growth of print production and the growth of cultural needs, the National Library had to change. In this context, scientific and technological developments opened up new perspectives for the fulfillment of its mission, both in the field of conservation and in the field of document acquisition.

Advances in IT tools and telecommunications are renewing the means of collection management and their identification. Combined with the digitization of texts and images, they enrich research and reading practices and open up the possibility of remote consultation of documents.

On July 14, 1988, in a traditional television interview in the Parc des Champs-Elysées, the President of the Republic, François Mitterrand, announced the "construction and development of the largest and most modern library in the world":

This large library must cover all areas of knowledge, be open to everyone, use the most modern data transmission technologies, enable remote consultations and establish relations with other European libraries.

The site finally chosen for its construction is on the banks of the Seine in the 13th arrondissement of Paris. In August 1989, the project designed by the architect Dominique Perrault was chosen by the President of the Republic after a project selection process by an international jury. The then Minister of Culture, Jack Lang, announced that all the printed works of the National Library, that is, ten million books, would be transferred there.

On December 20, 1996, the Research Library at the François Mitterrand site was opened, and on October 8, 1998, the opening of the Research Library marked the completion of this major project.