Religious Sciences
The Franciscan collections
The latest acquisitions
National collections
The BNU Religious Science collections were built through purchases but also donations of works and university and academic publications, a succession of donations (from professor libraries, a chapter of the Saint Thomas Foundation, etc.) all which regularly enrich the acquisitions. In 1920, this department amounted to about 180,000 titles.
Current acquisitions
The BNU Religious Science excellence centre today comprises:
-
the CADIST (Centre d’acquisition et de diffusion de l’information scientifique et technique - the Scientific and Technological Information Acquisition Centre) in Religious Sciences, that was created in BNU in 1980, in connection with the Catholic and Protestant Theology Faculties at the Marc Bloch University in Strasbourg (April 1981 convention). Strasbourg was chosen due to its specific location, the vivacity of its research and the age of its documentary collections.
-
The division associated with the BnF in Religious Sciences (pôle associé de la Bibliothèque nationale de France), which was created in 1994, establishes a shared cooperation of documents between the BNU and the BnF, striving toward complementariness in acquisition policies. This complementariness focuses on European Protestantism, Practical Theology and German publications on Judaism.
-
The BNU was granted the second publisher’s complimentary copy of the legal deposit in Religious Sciences by the BnF, which together enables them to cover the entire French production.
-
The Franciscan collections: permanent legal deposit of Franciscan libraries since 2002.
The excellence division increases by about 3,000 works annually and receives 700 periodicals per purchase, donation or exchange. Within the context of the Strasbourg University tradition, Christianity, Biblical Studies, the history of churches, practical and theological dogmas make up the main documentary axes of the excellence centre. Judaism, Islam, Asian religions, and antique religions, the history and sociology of religions, as well as religious philosophy are also key components. The acquisitions focus almost exclusively on foreign editions (especially German and English), as much for the critical editions of source texts, as for the detailed analytical, historical and sociological studies.
The excellence centre also offers electronic resources, either as integral texts (Acta Sanctorum, Dead Sea Scrolls, Early Church Fathers, Luthers Werke, Patrologia latina, etc.), or dictionaries and encyclopaedias (Anchor Bible Dictionary, Encyclopaedia Judaica, Encyclopaedia of Islam, etc. ), or bibliographic data bases ((ATLA Religion Database, etc.)
contact: Franck.Storne@bnu.fr