A survey on French library history since 1980

A Survey on French Library History since 1980

Dominique VARRY

ENSSIB (Lyons)

            Library history has not in France the same consideration nor the same notoriety as in the anglo-saxon world. For instance, France has no review comparable with Library History or Libraries and Culture. However, since the nineties and the publication of the Histoire des bibliothèques françaises in four volumes, it has won a certain visibility, and renewed its approaches and questions.The best proof of such a renewal is to be found in the multiplication, in recent years, of the number of maîtrise and DEA dissertations dealing with libraries in the modern and contemporary periods. But library history remains torn between different disciplinary fields : the history of the book which conquered its letters patent of nobility, the fashionable history of reading, and an uprising cultural history. The few observations and remarks on French library history hazards in the last twenty years that I shall propose in this paper are mine and quite personal. They only reflect the perception of one of this history actor. Others may have a different conception. However, let me expose them, and subject them to the debate.

1) Position difficulties

            In France, library history is a part of a disciplinary field which emerged in the sixties, and since has acquired its letters of nobility, I mean the history of the book. The best evidence of this situation is that the four volumes of Histoire des bibliothèques françaises[1] appeared a few years after the publication, between 1982 and 1986, of the four volumes of the Histoire de l'édition française. This Library history is in fact the counterpart of the publishing history. If French history of the book knew a wide effulgence, and if its two main researchers works, Henri-Jean Martin and Roger Chartier 's, are known and translated in numerous languages, we must admit that the history of the book has a very marginal place in the French university. It is only taught at the university of Tours, where an international Renaissance Center works on the sixteenth century, and at the university of Versailles-Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, where Jean-Yves Mollier develops researches on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The other places where the history of the book and library history are studied are particular institutions like the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, the Ecole pratique des hautes études, the Ecole nationale des chartes and Enssib. One of the most convincing examples of this marginalization is doubtless to be found in Graham Keith Barnett's thesis on the History of public libraries in France from the Revolution to 1939[2]. It needed an English academic to write such a dissertation presented in 1977 in an English university. It needed ten years before a French translation could be published in 1987. When at the same time a French scholar was writing another thesis on a neighbouring subject, this scholar was a jurist, and only the Ecole nationale supérieure de bibliothécaires could publish his book[3]. One must not conclude from these examples that French scholars of the time ignored libraries. But they were mainly interested in private libraries, and generally wrote about them some pages in their huge economical and social history theses yet fashionable, wether they dealt with geographical zones or social groups. We could quote here dozens of titles in which scholars, most of them being unaware of ancient books, did their best to use their archival sources. We must admit that they wrote pages which leave the specialist unsatisfied, and in which the best borders the worse. For their part, reading institutions, public or associations libraries only interested few librarians[4], for which they represented a sort of preserves.

The wide venture the Histoire des bibliothèques françaises constituted an important breaking in such a landscape. It is significant that it remains yet unknown to some scholars, and that it is inexplicably lacking in recent books bibliographies, where it should be quoted. This venture mobilized numerous authors among which are numerous librarians, but it also associated scholars from other branches. Such a situation has not been easy, and arose rough debates, especially about the two last volumes. Some librarians have yet admitted with difficulties what they considered as as an intrusion upon this research field from people who did not belong to their seraglio. They felt a bit deprived[5]. This venture allowed to draw up a statement of our knowledge and of our lacks. It also allowed a new research orientations in recent works we shall recall later.

The other position problem of library history is to be at the crossroads of a history of the book, a mentalities history, and a cultural history. The first one deals with numerous aspects such as history of technics, economic and social history... The second one is nowadays a bit discredited[6]. The third one is trying to become emancipated[7]. Finally, library history is linked to a wider and spreading history of reading. In France, the latter received the sanction of time by the recent success by the lettered public of Manguel's book[8]. This author has been invited in television talks, which gave him notoriety. But in the scholarly world, history of reading is essentially known through Roger Chartier[9], Anne-Marie-Chartier and Jean Hébrard[10]. The two lasts have just published a new book : Discours sur la lecture 1880-2000.

One of the handicaps library has to overcome is unprofitable isolation. To become really operetive and stimulating, it will have to confront more often with the history of other cultural institutions, on which it already is ahead. Dominique Poulot underlined the fact in his Bibliographie de l'histoire des musées de France, published in 1994[11]. He pointed out that if a History of French libraries was available, the French museums one was still to be written. The number of books about the emergence of the heritage notion, especially those written by this author[12], increased in the last years. Nevertheless, a comparative history of libraries, museums and archives, which in France have had a commun base since the Revolution, and have had parallel histories, is according to me, to write.

You will have understood that French library history is at the crossroads of numerous ways. It has also to deal with two other realities : on the one hand, it has to inscribe in a long time from the high Middle-Ages until the contemporary times, and on the other hand, it must study either private individual and communities collections or libraries opened to the public, whatever their status may be.

2) Research tendancies and results about private libraries.

            I shall only speak rapidly, because of my lack of ability, of researches about medieval libraries. Most of them are conducted in a laboratory of our National Research Center (CNRS) : the Institut de recherche et d'histoire des textes (IRHT). Its work aims to reconstitute lost libraries which belonged to monastic communities or persons of distinction. Its researchers use old and more or less precise records inventories and catalogs. They also examine ex-libris and possession marks of nowadays worldwide scattered manuscripts. Among their successes, I shall only quote an instance : the book about La Bibliothèque de l'abbaye de Saint-Denis en France du IXe au XVIIIe siècle, by Donatella Nebbiai-Dalla Guarda[13].

The works devoted to the modern period, between the 16th and 18th centuries, the one of the printed book, are more numerous and cope with a larger scale. They deal either with monastic communities libraries or collections of individuals of every social conditions. All their sources have their advantages and disadvantages. Their are of four kinds : domestic catalogs handwritten for the only use of the collection owner, after-death inventories, auctionsales catalogs, and inventories of revolutionary seizures. We must underline that auctionsales catalogs and after-death inventories often ignore heterodox and prohibited books which could cast a slur on the dead owner reputation. In other respects, auctionsales catalogs present other difficulties : anonymous owners uneasy to reveal, and gatherings of disparate properties to make a sale. Thes auctionsales catalogs have been the first to be studied by historians. In 1910, Daniel Mornet published a founding article[14] about 500 catalogs kept in Toulouse city library. His conclusions cannot be accepted today, and have been recently attacked by Robert Darnton[15]. In fact, Mornet was wrong in drawing from these catalogs inferences on eighteenth-century elites readings, in what he was entirely mistaken. Since that time the study of auctionsales catalogs has been revived under the angles of the collection and of bibliophily. The few works on the topic have mainly dealt with the catalogs kept in the national Library. In 1991, Françoise Bléchet[16] published a catalog of these documents belonging to the national Library, for the period 1630-1750. Years 1750-1770 have been studied by Nicole Masson, whose book on the subject is awaited. In 1998, Enssib opened a research entitled "The Spirit of books", aiming to the constitution of a database of auctionsales catalogs kept in France for the period 1680-1820[17]. The object was to use the collections of Lyons and Grenoble city libraries as a sample. At the present time, the 240 catalogs kept in Lyons constitute the beginning of this database, which can be found on the Enssib website[18].For their part, domestic catalogs, handwritten for the books owners, have been neglected. In a recent paper published by the Bulletin du bibliophile, Yann Sordet[19] has just drawn our attention on their existence and interest. Discoveries are to be awaited on this topic in the next years.

Afterdeath inventories remain the most studied source. They have been used by numerous authors in pin point chapters of social history theses evoked before. Among a superabondant production, we must quote a book presented as a model : the study written by Michel Marion[20] about Paris in the middle of the XVIIIth century. These inventories have been used too, on a wide scale, by Jean Quéniart[21] who studied, in his doctoral dissertation, ten French western cities of the XVIIIth century. Inventories of seizures operated under the French Revolution on monastic communities, émigrés and condemned people, have been rediscovered in the eighties[22]. Pierre Riberette[23] had used them in a book published in 1970 and dealing with the unfruitful revolutionary attempt of drafting a national collective catalog of confiscated books. The first full study of this material has been my own thesis on seizures operated in the Eure Departement in Normandy, which I presented at the Sorbonne in 1986, and which is to be published soon[24]. Since the exhibition "Le Patrimoine libéré"[25] presented at the Bibliothèque nationale in 1989, for the bicentenial of the Revolution, my own works and those of some of my students have allowed a better knowledge of this kind of sources. For her part, Anne Kupiec[26], in her doctoral dissertation published in 1998, drew our attention on the revolutionary myth of the "saver book", which partly explains why revolutionary authorities used confiscated books to open public libraries, supposed to diffuse patriotism and Enlightenment among the populations. We must add that Marie-Hélène Froeschlé-Chopard[27], in Marseilles, has carried on important researches on monastic libraries of France South-East, mainly using revolutionary inventories. It is quite certain that a wide scale exploiting of such a material will renew our knowledge in the next years. For unexplainable reasons, XIXth century private libraries remain an almost spotless field which has not been attrative to scholars. Meanwhile, booksales catalogs and afterdeath inventories also exist for this period.

Beyond the turning of such an archival material, last years gave the opportunity of rediscovering Gabriel Naudé, librarian of De Thou an cardinal Mazarin, and introducer of the "public library" notion, in his famous Advis pour dresser une bibliothèque. Published for the first time in 1627, this book instigated people of distinction to open their private libraries to the "public" of scholars and wits of the time. He was at the beginning of the XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries bequest wave which led to the opening of numerous libraries, ancestors of some of our city libraries. His Advis pour dresser une bibliothèque has been reprinted in 1990, according to the 1644 edition, by Claude Jolly[28] who gave a substantial introduction on the scholarly library notion. Important character of the XVIIth century "Libertin" free-thinking group, Gabriel Naudé has been studied by Robert Damien's important philosophy thesis. The part dedicated to libraries has been published in 1995 under the title : Bibliothèque et Etat. Naissance d'une raison politique dans la France du XVIIe siècle[29]. Naudé's plea for the public library leads us to evoke now the library as an institution.

3) New approaches towards the library institution in contemporary times.

            Nowadays, most of French libraries are the distant heirs of collections bequeathed by XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries booklovers, who wanted them to be readable by their fellowcitizens. But upon all, they have been constituted by millions of books confiscated under the Revolution, which have been devolved to the municipalities in 1803. For their part, universituy libraries, which had been suppressed in 1793, were only organized in the last quarter of the XIXth century. The third and fourth volumes of the Histoire des bibliothèques françaises have dealt with this quite long construction or reconstruction movement. They could be blamed for having given the first place to institutional and monumental aspects of this story. Such an approach was due to the state of our knowlege, which was mainly based on local monographs. New works allow to correct such a vision.

The history of the Bibliothèque nationale has been renewed since the end of the seventies. In 1978, Jean-François Foucaud[30] published his thesis devoted to the history of the library under the July Monarchy (1830-1848). Two years later appeared Simone Balayé's first volume of Histoire de la Bibliothèque nationale des origines à 1800[31], renewing a bibliography dating from the previous century. Unfortunately, an awaited second volume dedicated to the two next centuries never appeared. Since this publication, a certain number of major exhibitions held at the library allowed a better knowledge of some episodes of this institution life. Among them, let us quote Le Patrimoine libéré, yet evokated , and Des livres et des rois, a reconstitution attempt, on the spot, of the royal library as it existed at Blois castle in the XVIth century[32]. We may also draw your attention on a little well illustrated book published in 1990 by Bruno Blasselle and Jacqueline Sanson : La Bibliothèque nationale mémoire de l'avenir. Intended to a wide audience, this book was illustrated with photos of the Rue de Richelieu buildings. It was republished two years later, but with an iconography devoted to the new building of the Seine banks[33]. Let us finally add that the voluminous technical and polemical literature published about the construction of the "Très grande bibliothèque", then "Bibliothèque de France", and finally "Bibliothèque nationale de France" already form an important and chosen documentary gathering for the historian who will dare to deal with such a subject.

In the last years, other investigations wore on reading institutions parallel to the public libraries. Among them, are Françoise Parent-Lardeur's books on parisian reading-rooms of the XIXth century first years[34]. If they are now better known, we must admit that provincial reading-rooms, appearing at the end of the XVIIIth century and some of which have run till the years 1950, remain almost terra incognita. Noë Richter discovered, and recently published with a long introduction a Manuel de l'Oeuvre des bons livres de Bordeaux, dated 1834[35]. Far beyond its apologetical aspect, this book was destinated to catholic parish library creators, which appeared and multiplicated against city libraries all through the XIXth century. This book is important too, to understand the catholic antirevolutionary movement which issued in 1932 in the creation of the "Bibliothèques pour tous" (Libraries for everybody) network, still active today in a certain number of little towns, where it has for a long time competed with public reading networks.

Finally, the case of the "bibliothèques populaires" (popular libraries) has been revisited. These libraries have known their successful period between 1860 and 1880, aiming at modest publics of workers, who did not attend the city libraries then devoted to learned elites. Among works dealing with that question, we must notice Arlette Boulogne's unfortunately unpublished thesis[36] about the part played in these libraries networks development by national associations such as the Franklin Society and the Ligue de l'enseignement.

In another order of ideas, some Enssib students have worked on a critical subject : the one of ecclesiastical libraries, nowadays still marked by the double traumatism of revolutionnary seizures on the one hand, and of confiscations operated in 1905 on the occasion of the Separation between Churches and State, on the other hand. Marie-Lise Krumenacker wrote a DEA dissertation on the history of French religious librarians associations since 1950[37]. As for Isabelle Westeel, whose dissertation ended in an article published in the Revue française d'histoire du livre, she tried to understand the history of the seizures operated on the clergy in 1905[38]. This difficult question is still awaiting its researchers. This group of promising works on the whole, must not lead us to forget the the renewal of studies dedicated to libraries belonging to the public sector. Provincial university libraries have been the object of Alain Gleyze's masterly thesis[39], which should be published soon by Enssib.

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For their part, municipal libraries, created from 1803, benefited from a renewal of interest. One must probably impute to the publication of the Histoire des bibliothèques françaises the increasing number of master's essays dedicated to their history, in various French universities[40]. Beyond the sometimes remarkable monographs[41], one have seen in the last years praiseworthy endeavours to replace the library case in the wider one of municipal and national politics. Let us think of publications about censorship in libraries[42], "reading committees" of the XIXth century city libraries[43], comparisons between municipal library politics (for instance in the cases of Beançon and Dijon[44]), and so on... We can also point Philippe Poirier's efforts to develop and generalize this type of culture history compared studies[45]. It is to this effort about cultural politics that is linked another recent and innovative doctoral dissertation, Anne-Marie Bertrand's one presented in 1998 and entitled : Les Villes et leurs bibliothèques : legitimer et decider 1945-1985 (Cities and their Libraries : Legitimize and Decide 1945-1985)[46].

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A last recently renewed investigation ground is the one of the history of librarians and of their professional practices. I must admit that I have personally gathered a documentation which should allow me, some day, to write a book on this subject, prolonging some papers I have already given[47]. Until recently, the only work dedicated to the French librarians training was an an American PhD of 1968, Richard Gardner's one : Education for Librarianship in France. An historical Survey[48]. Since, the field has been reopened by some French scholars. Françoise Hecquard wrote a dissertation about the professional training given by the French Librarians Association from 1910 till 1991[49]. Christophe Pavlidès is preparing, at Versailles university, a thesis on the history of the CAFB (Certificate of capacity for librarian functions), which according to what he already told me about it, promises to be extremely interesting. However, the librarians, and quite especially those of provincial towns, remain very badly known. One of my students, Olivier Tacheau, begun to establish a prosographical database of the Third Republic municipal librarians, which he already used in his DEA report[50]. We may hope that his profesional responsabilities will not prevent him from achieving the important thesis he wished to write about them.

            At the end of this personal and necessarily simplified survey, library history in France remains today an emerging research field. The publication of the four volumes dedicated to it gave it a visibility, and in a certain way, its letters of nobility. It is important for it to find henceforth its place in a cultural history which has the wind aft. Works are multiplicating, approaches have been renewed. This history is no more the librarians monopoly, even if they remain numerous to contribute to it, but on the contrary, very few are the academics to be interested in. It is a challenge for us to go further !