Bibliographic Database
Access directly to the Bibliographic Database (in French).
In view of the widespread dispersal of articles and works about Versailles and life at court from the 17th to the 19th century, the need for a tool giving researchers quick access to these extremely important sources became evident, and therefore, systematic indexing began in 2006.
As a first step, we sifted through all the academic journals available on the Gallica website of the Bibliothèque nationale de France to extract relevant articles, some of which had been forgotten or left out of bibliographies in spite of having appeared in less specialised periodicals such as La Revue des Deux Mondes and La Revue de Paris and having been written by eminent historians and art historians.
Secondly, data was systematically retrieved from the bibliographies of seminal works, and a web index drawn up of periodicals whose tables had been published, either in hard copy or online.
Finally, having had the tools for fast digitisation available since autumn 2006, the Research Centre launched a campaign of digitisation.
Since 2019, the database has been enriched with new types of content: books, exhibition catalogues, symposium and study day proceedings, which are gradually added to the articles already listed. Consequently, the field “type of text” has been added and the input charter revised, involving a reworking of the existing notices which is currently underway.
Since May 2010, all references can be consulted, and all royalty-free articles downloaded, via the Centre’s resources portal.
To date, it lists over 5,650 references, including 2,555 accessible directly online, relating to Versailles or the subjects addressed by the programmes of the Research centre (statistics for 04/04/2024).
Regarding the enrichment of the corpus, systematic documentary tracking has been set up.
At the same time, a general bibliography as exhaustive and up to date as possible has been established, listing the collective works on Versailles and the court of France by publication type. The references that appear there are integrated into the database over time.
Furthermore, the Center also provides a selective and thematic bibliography, offering access to references along four axes: Versailles, royal family (1610-1789), French court, monarchy and government.
For any further questions on this database or suggestions for bibliographical references, please email us.
