Audit et conseil en stratégieSciences Po, 150 years of educational innovation
Institution
Sciences Po
Expertise implemented
Digitisation audit and technical study
Heritage digitisation offers
Background
Founded in 1872, France’s École Libre des Sciences Politiques (now called Sciences Po) has continually innovated and developed its cutting-edge educational offering. Today, Sciences Po hosts 14,000 students across its 7 French campuses.
The School has a strong international focus and has forged partnerships with 478 partner universities. Thanks to its rich library, it offers educational reference material to many readers all over the world.
Challenges
Sciences Po’s library plays a key role in providing documentary resources for students and researchers. Its 25 linear kilometres of shelving represent 1 million documents distributed over the school’s 7 campuses. The library is an integral part of the “Sciences Po 2022 campaign”, which has three objectives: open, reassemble, transform.
Olesea Dubois, Head of the School’s Digitisation and Digital Archiving department, explains how the institution has been embracing digital technology since 2014.
A strong digitisation policy from 2016
To keep pace with the school’s development in France and abroad, the library established an ambitious digitisation programme to offer unified access to all the school’s resources. A dedicated team of 6 people work on this programme together with Olesea Dubois, Head of Digitisation and Digital Archiving, and Pauline Bougon, the librarian in charge of digitisation.
Every year since 2016, Science Po has entrusted Arkhênum with digitisation campaigns that have included some of the school’s iconic collections: Histoire de Sciences Po andMémoires de l’Ecole, to name a few. The types of documents are extremely varied, including prints, surveys, monographs and theses.
“Since 2016, as part of our contract with Arkhênum, we’ve entrusted their team with digitising our FNSP heritage documents and theses.
This represents a volume of around 100,000 pages per year (…).
We’re very satisfied with Arkhênum’s work on all the documents, their transportation, digitisation, the quality of the files produced, and their communication with our team.”
Olesea Dubois, Head of Digitisation and Digital Archiving
The digital library: a dissemination driver
A new version of the Sciences Po digital library was launched in May 2021, increasing the collections’ attractiveness and consultation.
Digital technology: helping to overcome geographical constraints
A digital library is the most appropriate response for a delocalized context such as Sciences Po. To meet the requirements of openness to an international audience, the digital library is available in English and French versions.
Additional visibility is provided through a link to the Internet Archive website.
Standing out
The next step for the Sciences Po project team will be to integrate even more content from other School entities such as the Cartography Workshop, History Research Centre, etc.
Sciences Po also wishes to emphasize the unique nature and sheer wealth of its archives. Its digitisation project with Arkhênum has enabled it to put unique newspapers online, such as the Bulletin analytique de documentation politique, économique et sociale, offering students and researchers a unique opportunity to work on essential documents.
Discover other achievements
BnF-Partenariats
BnF-Partenariats teams up with 13 newspaper publishers and Arkhênum to digitise and promote their archives on a shared platform
Institut & France
Institut de France puts its written and documentary heritage on show
German National Library (DNB)
DNB: Search. Find. Discover
French National Industrial Property Institute
Preserving brand history
Renault
BnF-Partenariats
BnF-Partenariats teams up with 13 newspaper publishers and Arkhênum to digitise and promote their archives on a shared platform
Institut & France
Institut de France puts its written and documentary heritage on show
German National Library (DNB)
DNB: Search. Find. Discover
French National Industrial Property Institute
Preserving brand history