The place of denominational collections in scholarly libraries: a case study at the Centre d’anthropologie religieuse européenne

This article traces the place of denominational collections in France, from the Revolution, when they were transferred from church to public libraries, down to the present day. The authors present a case study of the library at the Centre d’anthropologie religieuse européenne, part of the École des Hautes Études en sciences sociales in Paris, which received several successive holdings of back issues of the journal revue Sanctuaires et pèlerinages. The article studies the best way to make scientific or scholarly use of such documents, collected on the basis of an entirely different set of criteria.
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