About the different categories of public libraries

The 20th of July 1931 law had two goals : to nationalize the scientifical staff of public libraries preserving the State collections stemmed from the most precious and the most important revolutionary confiscations ; to ensure technical control of the Government on all the public libraries more or less regularly and continuously according to the patrimonial importance of their collections. Libraries were arranged in three distinct categories. Consequently several decrees on the modes of control were enacted and a network control instituted. In 1947, control was again centralized and standardized by decree, but the three legislative categories remained. In 1977 these measures were codified as they were in the Code des communes. In 1983 control intensified. Since then official texts have been particularly and are more and more difficult to interpret as soon as new regulations as recent decrees about librarians statutes appear. At the prospect of a new codification and a reform of the legislation and the regulation, the author reviews the texts and underlines the present inconstencies.
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