A la bibliothèque

This week I visited the Bibliothèque nationale de France, got my reader's card, and got my first look at one of my manuscripts. Visits to the BnF are one of the biggest reasons for our entire trip, so it was both exciting and slightly nerve-wracking to make my first approach. I'm also trying to really use my French on this trip, so every interaction is a kind of test: do I get answered in pity-English?

I get to work at the oldest branch of the library, because the Latin manuscript collection is still housed there. (The new branch, on the other hand, looks like this.) And it's only about four blocks from our apartment! To access the collection, though, you have to prove your academic credentials. So my first encounter was with a nice print-shop employee, who printed out my letters of reference. The whole thing transpired in French, though my sentences involved a lot of waving papers and pointing at things.

The second stop was a security guard at the entrance. I asked him the way to the reader orientation office, and either something about me asking twice or my look of terror led him to start telling me I'd better take the TGV... fortunately I did not believe this and the office was just past the gate! (Happy ending to this story: this guard now tells me "bon courage!" when I enter and we had a conversation completely at cross purposes about how my dissertation is going.)

Next, according to the website, one must have an interview with a librarian. This also passed peacefully, though with her speaking very, very slowly and precisely (for which I was grateful). And in the end I got the card that lets me into the manuscripts reading room.

This branch is old and beautiful, in a grandiose way. There are chandeliers, velvet book-rests, and a very, very quiet atmosphere. The atmosphere is so quiet I didn't quite dare introduce myself to the eminent historian of the twelfth century who has been looking at manuscripts (and, I'm pretty sure, napping at least once) in the reading room this week.

The first thing I'm consulting is a manuscript from the twelfth century, a commonplace book which turns out to be very small, only maybe 4"x6", probably compiled by the monk whose history I plan to write my dissertation about. It's so exciting to see something he planned and designed himself, and to learn some of his quirks--like highlighting all his clever rhyme schemes and meter in his own poems. Alas, I was not allowed to photograph the reading room or my manuscript, so this is all I have to show you:

Then I only had to: figure out where to go to pay for my card before it would start working; how to work the lockers where all one's belongings have to stay while in the reading room; in what order to fill out and hand in, and to which librarians, the white, yellow, and blue slips of paper that are used to order and retain manuscripts but whose workings are not explained anywhere (that I know of); how to know where to sit; and how to be allowed to look at manuscripts instead of their microfilm copies! Reading my scribe's handwriting and his abbreviations--both of which are very clear by medieval standards, but difficult nonetheless for beginners--is getting a little easier, and since I even managed to discover how to take a lunch break but still get back in to the library, I'm looking forward to this week's work.