Italian studies in Grenoble and the Droit et Lettres university library
For both historical and institutional reasons, the Droit et Lettres university library holds particularly rich collections in the field of Italian studies.
In 1997, the CADIST (Centre d'Acquisition et de Diffusion de l'Information Scientifique et Technique) for Italian Language, Literature and Civilization was created at the Droit et Lettres university library: this national initiative has enabled the support and development of specialized collections.
Grenoble's center for research and teaching in Italian Studies was then considered the most important in France. The history of the discipline (founded in Grenoble in 1897) and Grenoble's geographical proximity to Italy justified its creation.
The story continues to unfold, with the opening up of the conservation of
archives and translators. The university library is home to
the Mario Fusco funda great French Italianist, comparativist and translator of the second half of the 20th century, and a true cultural mediator between France and Italy.
The collections in figures (2019)
More than 15,000 documents, including 12,000 in open access
190 periodical titles, including 83 living titles
Over 500 pre-1920 documents, including 19 manuscripts
Collection highlights: Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio; contemporary poetry ;
20th century literature; BNF legal deposit of translated Italian literature
Digital resources: 2 bibliographic databases:
Torrossa, a full-text database whose archive has been purchased on a permanent basis, providing access to niche resources that are rare even on the Italian market. This database offers an interesting complementarity between paper and digital resources
Early European Books (EEB) collection no. 2 offers access to 2,750 volumes of early books in all languages, digitized from the holdings of the Biblioteca nazionale in Firenze, from 1450 to 1700.
Specialized research services
Alongside the creation of reference collections, service projects have been developed and established in partnership with researchers, and in 2017 this was reinforced by the
DGD BAPSO becomes delegated library (Italian Studies - Digital Humanities) in the GIS Collex-Persée, a national scheme designed to strengthen links between research and university libraries.
Emblematic of this approach is Fonte Gaia, a Franco-Italian project built around a scientific digital library born of dialogue between librarians, engineers and researchers. Fonte Gaia is part of a European consortium known as CoBNIF (Consortium Bibliothèque Numérique Franco-Italienne) created in December 2015 between Grenoble Alpes University, Université Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle, Università degli Studi di Padova and Università degli studi di Roma "La Sapienza". The team in charge of the project maintains a scientific blog on the Hypotheses platform, Fonte Gaia Blog. The inauguration of the new version of the digital library is scheduled for June 2019.
The university library is also involved in coordinating a shared conservation plan for periodicals, organizing training courses and scientific events, implementing cultural activities and supporting research projects.
