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The Library holds a variety of materials on French history and culture, all of which can be located through the Library of Congress Online Catalog or the Library of Congress Digital Collections.
The Library of Congress Online Catalog is a great place to begin your research since it provides bibliographic descriptions for the vast majority of collection items available at the Library.
All searches can be narrowed down by adding filters to your search using the "Add Limits" button. Limit searches with the following options:
The Library of Congress Online Catalog represents a collection of over 18 million catalog records for books, serials, manuscripts, maps, music, recordings, images, and electronic resources in the Library of Congress collections. The vastness of the French collections makes it imperative to use limits and more refined searches to wade through the volume of material. In some cases—where a title or author is known in advance—it is easy to do a title or author search. However, when looking for material on a given topic (Browse Search using "Subject Containing") it will help to use the assigned Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). It is essential to determine the LCSH that was used to group subject material and this is not always intuitive. There are printed volumes that provide alphabetized lists of the LCSH. The broadest term for books on France during the German occupation is "France--History--German occupation, 1940-1945". There are narrower terms following that will further refine your search results including underground movements in the different departments of France.
Relevant LCSHs on the French Resistance and related topics in various genres:
It is important to conduct many searches. For example, World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, French is a broad term which will bring you memoires of all types for this period in France. You will find additional works under France--History--German occupation, 1940-1945--Personal narratives.
When searching for individuals, it is recommended that you locate the authoritative name used by the Library's catalogers. For example, to find all forms of the name Geneviève de Gaulle Anthonioz, browse "AUTHORS/CREATORS (Containing)":
Another way to determine a LCSH is to locate a relevant book by title, and note the LCSHs that have been assigned. There will be some overlap, and these subject headings are not always entirely comprehensive. For example, conducting a title search for "French Resistance" will bring you to a book with that title, and scrolling down you will see the LC Subject headings providing the following terms which are linked to thousands of relevant titles as well as narrower terms related to the subject:
This guide is for students of French language and culture. It offers a selection of books in French including: comics (bande dessinée) & graphic novels, children's and young adult literature, crime novels, contemporary fiction, and contemporary issues.
This guide is a starting point for research on women in the French Revolution of 1789. It includes English and French-language bibliographies, open-access digital resources, images, and biographical information on key figures in the Revolution.
Farmer’s almanacs provide information on forthcoming events, weather forecasts, farmers' planting dates, tide tables, and related information. The resources in this guide focus on French-language almanacs published in the U.S. since the mid-18th century.