LIBRARY

Cover of a work The library has more than 120,000 titles linked to the history of French colonisation and, more generally, the history of the French Overseas Territories, former colonies and Algeria.

Monographs and brochures, reviews, press and official publications from the Overseas Territories form an exceptional set of printed documentary resources, which presents colonial literature in all its forms, local (often rare) and metropolitan editions.

The Archives Nationales d'Outre-Mer has been able to gather together several historical collections from the XVIIth Century to the 1960s.

Bibliothèque Moreau de Saint-Méry: The erudite Moreau de Saint-Méry (1750-1819), a man of politics, a scholar and a Creole from Martinique, collected an impressive number of documents for his personal work. Made up of 275 uniformly bound volumes, this library includes books, factums, and local newspapers which are extremely rare. It may only be consulted in microfilm form (87 mioms).

Bibliothèque de l'Ecole Coloniale: The Ecole Coloniale (Colonial School) established in Paris, trained administrators in the French colonial field. For documentary and educational reasons, from 1890 it was equipped with a library which from the 1950s contained more than 30,000 titles. Part of this was transferred to Aix from 1975 onwards. A closed collection, originally very technical, in which are found numerous manuals of indigenous languages, treatises of law, geographical works and works concerning English and Dutch colonisation.

Bibliothèque Section Outre-Mer (SOM): The library of the former Ministry for the Colonies devoted originally to the officials of the Ministry and kept in Paris (rue Oudinot) until 1986. A closed collection, it includes more than 23,000 monographs and a large number of brochures. They also contain a collection of rare books (700 titles).

Bibliothèque AOM: being enlarged. Originally it was made up of what could be brought after decolonisation from the library of the General Government of Algeria. It was enriched by regular additions.

The library is regularly enlarged by purchases and the donation of old works or recent publications.

Search tool:

Library catalogue

Communication: Consultation of library works takes place in the reading room.