CIFNAL and ARTFL (University of Chicago) are collaborating with the Médiathèque de l’agglomération troyenne (MAT) to add text-searching and analysis capabilities to its collection of the Bibliothèque Bleue. The project aims to create a searchable digital library of chapbooks from France printed in the 17th to the early 19th centuries. ARTFL has generously provided the initial funding for this project.
Bibliothèque Bleue is characterized as works of popular literature—fiction, popularized histories, advice manuals—printed in France on inexpensive blue paper and sold by itinerant vendors on the streets. MAT (the municipal library of Troyes) has one of the most important collections of works of this genre. Its collection contains more than 2,500 works, almost 700 of which were printed in Troyes.
MAT has begun to digitize these works, and has contributed nearly 300 texts for marking up by CIFNAL/ARTFL. To date, ARTFL has created double-keyed and tagged texts of 116 titles, using TEI-light encoding and incorporating into ARTFL’s PhiloLogic database. The texts are available at: https://artfl-project.uchicago.edu/node/170.
Coordinators: Sarah Sussman (Stanford), Mark Olsen and Robert Morrissey (ARTFL), Monsieur Thierry Delcourt (MAT).
For more information about the Médiathèque de l’agglomération troyenne and its collections and projects, please visit https://troyes-champagne-mediatheque.fr/
