Library and Museum Facilities

The Young Research Library at UCLA is one of the country's largest and most renowned academic libraries, regularly rated among the tops three in the nation by the Association of Research Libraries. The 19-branch system holds nearly 6 million volumes and receives over 80,000 serial publications. It is serviced by the latest computer technology, notably an on-line catalog and information system called Orion. Its resources, among them excellent collections in French literature, linguistics, history, and philosophy, are accessible to students and visitors. The recently centralized book storage for the southern California branches of the UC system, the SRLF, is housed on the UCLA campus. The Department of Special Collections houses rare books, pamphlets, early maps, and a collection of nineteenth-century fiction, as well as rare manuscripts. Other specialized collections include the Art Library with its holdings in the history of French Art, and the Film Archives with large holdings in French cinema. Jean Renoir's personal papers are housed in the collection.

Powell Library houses material related to the undergraduate curriculum and offers facilities for studies and research, and a reserve service for course readings and a reference collection.

The Clark Memorial Library, located downtown and supplementing the University Library, holds an internationally recognized collection of 17th- and 18th-century material.

Reinforcing the already available resources in French studies, UCLA has recently assumed management of the Armand Hammer Museum of Art and Cultural Center, located near campus. The Museum's permanent collection includes paintings by a number of 19th-century French artists, including works by Monet and Boudin. The Armand Hammer Honoré Daumier and Contemporaries Collection is a compilation of more than 10,000 works by the nineteenth-century French caricaturist. Part of the new UCLA Armand Hammer Museum, the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts has comprehensive holdings of Matisse, Picasso and other French painters. One of the main recent exhibitions is French Renaissance in Prints from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the first comprehensive survey ever presented on the origins of printmaking in 16th-century France.

The Humanities Library, located in 250 Royce Hall, is available for students and faculty in French. Along with primary texts, its holdings include dictionaries, encyclopedias, scholarly editions, critical literature, and a selection of current French and international newspapers and periodicals. The department also possesses over 250 video recordings of French films, as well as television programs, interviews with writers, plays, poetry, and other literary texts. Most primary texts and a number of recommended readings from the Reading List for the M.A. and Ph.D. examinations are held in reserve on special shelves.  Computer terminals in the French Library and in other computer rooms give access to the UCLA and UC system libraries' electronic catalogs as well as to the University of Chicago's ARTFL, one of the largest textual databases available today in any language.

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