| Rooms which may be found
in a French library: |
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Salle d'accueil,
orientation, secrétariat, service des lecteurs:
Reception or orientation room
To obtain a reader's ID card and information about hours open and procedures Salle de lecture, salle de consulation: Reading room Reading rooms are usually organized by type of document. Libraries may thus offer one, two or several different rooms: salle des manuscrits (manuscripts), salle des périodiques (periodicals), salle des imprimés (printed matter, except periodicals), salle des cartes et plans (maps and plans). In the reading room the reader has access to the usuels: reference materials such as dictionaries, encyclopedias, phone books, directories, and basic books or periodicals in various fields. The librarian in charge is available for information involving research matters. Salle de la réserve, réserve: Reserve room For consultation of rare documents such as manuscripts, carvings, incunabula, and books. Access to this room is reserved to readers who justify their request to the librarian in charge. Hours the Réserve is open may differ from those of other reading rooms. Salle des catalogues: Catalog room For catalogs, be they printed volumes, card catalogs, or computerized databases. Usually a printed catalog is composed of several volumes, each corresponding to a specific period of time. Each volume is organized in alphabetical order by author. It is often necessary to consult several volumes to identify all the sources relative to one person. This room must not be confused with the Salle de bibliographie (Reference room). Salle de bibliographie: Reference room for bibliographic research For consultation of general or thematic printed bibliographies and for research materials such as the usuels. |
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| Obtaining materials |
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Most French libraries have closed stacks. To obtain documents,
a form (usually called bulletin) must be filled out including the complete
title, volume number, date, and call number (cote) of each document requested.
Usually, the call number is constituted by numbers, letters and signs, the latter
often indicating the dimension of the document. It may be inserted between slashes
(//), brackets ([]), or underlined, in bold, in another color, and/or preceded
by a symbol. When catalogs are not computerized, they are in card or book form.
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| The various types of card catalogs |
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Fichier auteur or fichier alphabétique
auteurs: Alphabetical catalog by author
The documents are listed alphabetically by author's last name, then by title. If there is more than one publication of any particular title, the most recent will be placed first. The fichier auteur also includes other type of cards: secondaires, anonymes par excès d'auteurs, oeuvres collectives. |
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Fiche secondaire:
identifies various types of contributions to a publication: Av.-prop. (foreword)
or Préf. (preface), Collab. (collaboration), Comment.
et notes (comments and notes), Ed. (editor, scientific publisher, not
considered in France as an "author"), Ill. (illustrator), Postf.
(afterword). All these cards are usually placed after the cards identifying
books by the same author.
Anonymes par excès d'auteurs (anonymous): when a work has more than three authors, it appears under the first alphabetical letter of its title, not under any of the authors' names. Collective publications are often considered as anonymes par excès d'auteurs. Oeuvres collectives: collective publications Works such as proceedings of colloquia, exhibition catalogs, festschrifts may be found under their title or under the alphabetical letter of the category to which they belong. For example: |
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| E: Exposition (Exhibition) V: Vente (Auction) H: Hommage (Festschrift) M: Mélanges (Festschrift) |
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Fichier matière:
Classification by subject
This classification is usually alphabetical. It can sometimes be analytical (subjects organized by categories, then by sub-subjects). Fichier des périodiques: Periodicals organized by titles Cards always list the years and issues. The dépouillement des périodiques (alphabetical inventory of periodicals) is rare and consists of an index card for every author of a contribution, with the title of the article, the name of the periodical, the year, the number and pages. Listings by topic are more frequent in specialized libraries, especially for dossiers de presse (press clippings). Fichier des collections: Collections organized by titles In almost every library, these cards list books belonging to publisher series Additional catalogs Finally, depending on the library, the catalog room may also contain the following catalogs: |
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Fichier
des colloques et congrès (colloquia and conference catalog) |
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