La contemporaine, French library, archive center and museum
La Contemporaine is a library, archive, and museum at Paris Nanterre University that opened in autumn 2021. The building houses over 4.5 million items from the 20th and 21st centuries, including books, magazines, photographs, posters, manuscripts, and artwork, accessible through reading rooms, exhibition halls, and a digital collection called L'Argonnaute with over 200,000 digitized documents.
La Contemporaine was originally founded in 1914 and operated under the name BDIC until 2018. The renaming to La Contemporaine marked a shift toward strengthening its focus on researching contemporary worlds and the history of the 20th and 21st centuries.
The name La Contemporaine reflects its focus on recent history and contemporary worlds through documents and objects. Visitors can see how wars, migrations, and social movements are told through photographs, writings, and artifacts that show how people experienced their own time.
The venue is easily accessible through Paris Nanterre University and open to all visitors with prior registration. Reading and work areas are available Monday through Saturday, with extended hours on weekdays until around 7 PM and shorter hours on Saturdays starting midday.
The collection includes a large network of digitized materials on L'Argonnaute that allows searching and discovering rare historical documents from anywhere. This makes it possible to explore thousands of photographs, posters, and manuscripts online without needing to visit campus.
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