Starting the search - history of the Bibliotheque de Nationale

Image taken from the Bibliotheque Nationale de France

When I first started this blog, my original research topic was going to be the history of the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, the British Library, the Lenin library, and the Library of Congress. However, I realised that I underestimated just how much of a task it would be to write about all four, and I have now decided to cut the list in half. Therefore, I am now focusing on on just the Bibliotheque Nationale de France and the Lenin library.
I started my research with the history of the Bibliotheque Nationale with a basic Google search. The main problem I found with doing this, which I had not thought was that being a French library, many of the results were in French rather than English. This meant that although some of the results might have relevant to what I wanted, I couldn’t use them unless I tried to translate them.

The Bibliotheque Nationale de France, is the state library of France, and was originally founded from the royal library at the Louvre art gallery, which was founded by Charles V in 1368 (Wikipedia, 2010). The libraries collection increase during the reign of Louis XIV, and then again during the French revolution when many private collections were taken.
The library itself underwent a brief name change, to the Imperial National Library, after several regime (?) changes in France, and with this, the library itself moved as well in 1868. The new buildings were designed by Henris Labrouste, and the library was again expanded after Henri’s death in 1875 by Jean-Louis Pascal, an architect.  In 1988 the then president Francois Mitter announced that a new library would be constructed.  This was designed by an architectural firm, Dominique Perrault, and was eventually completed in 1995.  Much of the collection was moved here, although some still remains at the old site.

The new Bibliotheque de National library buildings, image taken from the France Diplomatie website.

'Bibliothèque nationale de France' 2010, Wikipedia, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, viewed 27 August 2010
 
 
 
2. http://www.bnf.fr/en/tools/lsp.site_map.html

Getting Started...

The topic I have chosen from the ones provided, relates to the Renaissance, Reformation and Modern World (to 1900) era of history. From within this topic, I have decided to focus on the development of early national libraries, the Bibliotheque Nationale, the British Museum Library, the Lenin Library and the Library of Congress.
My interest in this topic is partially to do with an interest in libraries and their history in general. Despite being a library studies student, I don’t actually really know anything about any of the above libraries other than the Library of Congress, and so I think that this might be an interesting topic. The other reason for this choice of topic is that I am hoping that such large well-known libraries will have plenty of information available on them.