The creation of the Artist Libraries Project was sparked by the observation that artist libraries are still not well known, yet many art historians are interested in this archive for the value it adds to understanding the person behind the artist and his or her creative process. The problem is that these libraries are rarely physically preserved. To remedy this dispersion, we built an online database and a website www.lesbibliothequesdartistes.org that house this valuable source in the form of lists of books and their electronic versions. First data on Monet's library have been made available, and several additional artist libraries from the 19 th and 20 th centuries are on the way for 2019. By gathering all these bibliographical data in a central database, it's possible to explore one library and to compare several. This article explains how we built the database and the website and how the implementation of those IT tools has raised questions about the use of this resource as an archive on the one hand, as well as its value for art history on the other.
The Foucault Fiches de Lecture (FFL) project aims both to explore and to make available online a large set of Michel Foucault’s reading notes (organized citations, references and comments) held at the BnF since 2013. Therefore, the team is digitizing, describing and enriching the reading notes that the philosopher gathered while preparing his books and lectures, thus providing a new corpus that will allow a new approach to his work. In order to release the manuscripts online, and to collectively produce the data, the team is also developing a collaborative platform, based on RDF technologies, and designed to link together archival content and bibliographic data. This project is financed by the ANR (2017-2020) and coordinated by Michel Senellart, professor of philosophy at the ENS Lyon. It benefits from the partnerships of the ENS/PSL and the BnF. In addition, a collaboration with the European READ/Transkribus project has been started so as to produce automatic transcription of the reading notes.
