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Archives en bibliothèques (XVIe-XXIe siècles)

Archives en bibliothèques (XVIe-XXIe siècles)

Edited by Emmanuelle Chapron, Fabienne Henryot

Métamorphoses du livre



Library Archives (16th-21th c.)

Are libraries archival repositories and if so, what do they archive and how do they do it? This book proposes to discuss the relevance of the generally accepted boundaries between archives and libraries, to examine the long-term construction of documentary repositories and the functions, sometimes quite distinct, sometimes more hybrid, that are attributed to them by European societies. Using case studies, the sixteen contributions in this volume trace the circumstances in which certain types of documents were considered as archival materials and how they were distributed in archives or libraries. They examine the criteria on which this institutional and documentary distinction was based, and the way in which these choices conditioned the work of sorting, selection, classification and consultation. They thus invite us to re-examine the genesis of records collections, within families, State institutions or scholars' offices, and to shed new light on the conditions of the making of history, then and now.