Libraries and the Organization of Universities in France, 1789-1881

Abstract

The Revolution of 1789 abolished universities and confiscated their libraries. The Imperial University, an educational bureaucracy that survived the Empire and endured for most of the nineteenth century, did not promote research or require research libraries. But beginning in 1855 efforts to replace the imperial system with autonomous universities focused on the role of university libraries. In 1881 university libraries were created in the provinces as a first step toward creating universities, fifteen years before the de jure establishment of universities.