Taking up the digital challenge: image digitisation projects at the Bibliothèque nationale de France1

More than 20 million images are to be found at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), in the form of book and periodical illustrations, manuscript illuminations, maps and plans, prints, drawings and photographs. The editorial context of these images means they are to be found in all fourteen collections departments of the library. However, it is the department of Prints and Photographs that, thanks to legal deposit for published images instituted in the 17th century, possesses one of the richest iconographic collections in the world: prints, posters, drawings, photographs, postcards, etc. These images have to be consulted in the reading rooms of the library’s different collection departments, which are at five different sites (François-Mitterrand (Tolbiac), Richelieu, Arsenal, Opéra, Avignon - Maison Jean Vilar). The introduction of digitisation should bring many changes to this traditional means of research, although we are still only at the beginning, with a programme that started little more than ten years ago.