The Bibliothèque de Documentation Internationale Contemporaine (BDIC) – now called La Contemporaine – was founded in 1918 with the purpose of building a collection with all possible information about the First World War. The BDIC is currently a part of the Université de Paris-Ouest at Nanterre. The BDIC has some 800,000 books in its holdings and 2,500 archival collections. 60,000 documents with some 400,000 pages have been digitized. The information about the First World War is not prominently visible at the website. You can start searching among the main types of collections (books, archives, images, paintings, objects) and in the digital library (Bibliothèque numérique). However, there are separate sections dedicated to the First World War, and some shortcuts:
- The digitized Journaux des tranchées form a special section of the BDIC’s digital library
- The thematic dossier La Première Guerre mondiale: Le quotidien sur le front de l’ouest looks in some depth at daily life at the Western front, with a detailed section for further information
- The digital library contains 153 volumes of the Historique des régiments (1918)
- The Cartable Virtuel de la BDIC is a pilot of a pedagogical website on the First World War
- You can view seven selections of digitized postcards at the French Centenaire portal
A post in German at the blog La Grande Guerre offers further guidance to the First World War collections of the BDIC. In November 2014 the BDIC launched a new digital portal, L’Argonnaute, with online expositions, collections and a blog. There is an overview of digitized materials concerning the Grande Guerre. In addition to those already mentioned here you will find, posters (affiches), pamphlets (tracts), documents about the peace treaties and documentation about the rehabiltation of fusillied soldiers (Les fusillés de 1917). Apart from these collections you can view the online exhibition Camus, Krier, Lotze: itinéraires croisés des trois artistes combattants.
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