They are multidisciplinary and bring together the old and heritage collections of the University library and Pharmacy, the University library , and the University library of University library and Letters.
These collections consist mainly of
printed works. They include a large collection of dictionaries from the 16th to the 19th century (Calepin, Furetière, Ménage, Moreri, Bayle, Diderot, Dictionnaire de l'Académie, etc.), as well as atlases and travel books, prints, photographs, and maps. The University library holds 13 volumes of photographic maps of the sky (the Carte du Ciel project launched in 1887 by Ernest Mouchez) as well as geological maps.
The
manuscript collection, comprising around 100 volumes, is currently being analyzed and cataloged.
The disciplines represented in these collections include law, theology, literature, medicine, pharmacy, botany, zoology, astronomy, mathematics, physics, chemistry, and engineering, with a particularly large collection on hydraulics.
The
legal collection
owes its origins to the presence of a parliament in the city of Grenoble from the end of the 15th century and to the vigor of legal publishing during the 17th and 18th centuries. The oldest books in this collection date from the 17th century and are works by Grenoble lawyers such as Nicolas Chorier, Jean Guy Basset, and Guy Pape.
There are also collections of 17th-century case law and original editions of the Civil Code and the Napoleonic Code.
The collection of
18th-century theological works from Lyon comes mainly from the Grand Séminaire de Grenoble.
The
medicine and pharmacy collections have been enriched by donations: one from François Billerey (1775-1839), a doctor from the Dauphiné region and father of thermalism in the Dauphiné, and another from Dr. Antoine-Barthélémy Clot (1793-1868).
For
botany, the University library and Pharmacy holds a copy of Dominique Villars' Histoire des plantes de Dauphiné (History of the Plants of Dauphiné), with 55 copperplate engravings by J. Robert and Chauvin.
A large collection
of works on hydraulics, comprising several hundred books from the 16th to the 20th century, is held at the University library . These works come mainly from the library of the School of Hydraulic Engineers founded in Grenoble in 1929.
These documents, which include numerous plates, deal with hydraulics in the broadest sense, both theoretically (fluid mechanics) and practically (engineering arts); the oldest ones deal with wells, fountains, reservoirs, mills, and primitive hydraulic machines such as water-lifting machines, wheels, and pumps.
Almost all of the old and heritage collections are listed in the BELUGA catalog and in SUDOC. Upon request, they can be consulted in the reading room (see Practical Information).
Some of these collections have been digitized and are available in the
Digital Heritage Library.
It is possible to request the digitization of works from the heritage collections by contacting the
digitization service. This service is free of charge.
