Access to Historical Works in a French Library: Documents for Monastic History in the Médiathèque d’Arles

Abstract

Despite ever-increasing electronic access to a wide variety of information resources, academic librarians need to remember that a significant number of historical documents are not available in digital form; nor have the catalogs or bibliographies containing these documents been digitized. While it is true that many libraries in Europe, as well as the United States, now make their general library catalogs available on the Internet, frequently there existed manuscripts and documents that never were included in the original card catalog that served as the basis for the online catalog. Thus, the historical scholar must depend on reference sources, such as . . .