Les petites bibliothèques de la République : aux origines de la lecture publique parisienne, des années 1870 aux années 1930
Institution:
Paris 10Disciplines:
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Abstract EN:
After its golden age (1860-1880), the "people's library" reached a profound crisis while, at the same time, the third republic included it in its educational programs as an extension of the public schools' structure. This thesis sheds light on the republican discourse and on the way it dealt with the administrative and local pratices. It focuses on the building of a cultural institution, the public library. The city of paris and the seine department started this innovative building process, which gave shape to a network of libraries. This work studies this institutional building, the material and ideological constraints it had to face. It describes the political constraints the state imposed and the way local actors tried to react. It underlines several aspects of this building process. The public library had to find its own space. Resources were allocated depending on statistical features, which brought about a particular kind of selection among libraries, and eventually imposed a municipal status and free acces to public libraries. Also, the way books were distributed led to a censorship that separated "good" books from "bad" books and homogenized the libraries' stocks. The government tried to regulate the practice of reading by touching the very mechanism of the distribution of the books. Furthermore, the thesis also describes the libraries network with its geographic, demographic and functional data. As a result, the notion of public access to reading was progressively accepted thanks to the tentative synthesis experienced by the library officials between the people's and the elite's library, between free and municipal status, and between freedom and equality. A new model emerged since the philanthropic model of reading was transformed into a public service, which also became integrated in the space of the modern city in the beginning of the 20th century. It grew distant from the school system and became an institution by itself.
Abstract FR:
Explorer les origines de la lecture publique en france invite a elucider ce paradoxe : apres son age d'or (1860-1880), la bibliotheque populaire connait une crise profonde alors meme que la iiie republique en fait le prolongement de l'ecole dans son programme d'instruction publique. L'etude du discours republicain, confronte aux pratiques administratives et locales, eclaire les modes de faconnement d'une institution culturelle : la bibliotheque publique, ouverte a tous. Une politique originale de fondations, orchestree par la ville de paris et le departement de la seine, permet d'analyser les mecanismes qui informent un reseau de lecture : le processus de fondation, entre contraintes materielles et ideologie, entre acteurs locaux et prescription centrale ; la quete difficile d'un espace propre a la bibliotheque ; l'elaboration des criteres statistiques qui gouvernent la repartition budgetaire, comment ils induisent et perpetuent une selection des etablissements, comment ils contribuent a imposer le statut municipal et la gratuite ; comment l'allocation des ressources et les concessions d'ouvrages participent d'une censure preventive qui designe les bons livres et uniformise les fonds ; la tentative de reguler, voire de verrouiller, les pratiques de lecture au cur meme des moyens de la diffusion du livre ; les conceptions du reseau, entre donnees spatiales, territoriales, demographiques, fonctionnelles. L'esprit de la lecture publique progresse grace aux timides tentatives de synthese entre lecture populaire et lecture savante, entre inspiration libre et statut municipal, entre liberte et egalite, par-dela les traditionnels cloisonnements. La bibliotheque populaire heritee se degage lentement du modele philanthropique de la lecture octroyee pour devenir un service, inscrit dans l'espace de la cite moderne du premier xxe siecle. Elle s'affranchit peu a peu de la tutelle de l'ecole, definit ses exigences professionnelles pour s'imposer comme institution specifique.