The French Studies Library Group (FSLG) acts as a focus for all concerned with the provision of library resources and services in French Studies in the UK. It is organising a study day on Francophone collections in archives and libraries on 21st November 2025 at the Maison française d’Oxford, in partnership with the French Embassy in the UK (Higher Education, Research and Innovation Department).
We invite proposals for talks reflecting the varieties of French language and literature produced outside of France, as well as the dialects, regional, and minority languages spoken in France, as well as the oral and written collections of such material, in print and manuscript in addition to electronic resources.
This could include work on French-related language material and collections available in a specific library or archive, especially in the United Kingdom and in the Francophone world. The focus could be any aspect of the history, identification, description, constitution, and circulation of such sources and corpora, and a discussion of the specific challenges they raise. Contributions could reflect on their preservation and promotion, including through recent or ongoing digital projects and research (more information here).
This follows the successful 2023 Institut Français event on French collections in the United Kingdom and 2024 event on Collections in French at the British Library. We are also delighted to announce the recent publication of the open-access publication Paper Trails, The Social Life of Archives and Collections (UCL Press) Entente Cordiale update, profiling a number of French collections held in UK institutions which featured in the 2023 conference, including:
– Creating the Chadwyck-Healey Liberation Collection (1944-1946)
There will also be the option to publish in Paper Trails collection profiles, engagement or co-production projects based on collections, or full-length scholarly research articles arising from the November 2025 study day.
Irene Fabry-Tehranchi
Languages across Borders 