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Some things to keep in mind relating to the collection:

  1. In 2023, there are c. 3,250 books from the Liberation collection on the Library's catalogue. The collection is considered as complete, although some additional titles are still occasionally being added to the collection. The collection lends itself to the statistical analysis of such things as the number of and geographic distribution of printers and publishers, the percentage of books by prisoners, and by concentration camp survivors; prevalence of different genres – novels, plays, poetry; books by women etc.
  2. The entire collection can be browsed using the library catalogue. (all books in the collection have the words 'Chadwyck-Healey Liberation Collection, 1944-1946' in their catalogue records). If you want to use the advanced search, choose "Classmark" and write "Liberation.*", then add the relevant criteria.
  3. Remember that the University Library has a big collection! The Liberation collection does not contain all relevant material relating to the Liberation of Paris or France. However, by providing these recommended searches, we hope that we can help to narrow down a very large collection to a manageable size.

Tips for searching the collection:

  • All books in the collection relating to a specific geographical area:
    • Following an initial search of the catalogue limited to the collection, click on the options on the right to refine your results by Subject.
    • One may filter searches in this manner to countries (such as France or Germany), regions (such as Africa, North), or specific cities (such as Lyon or Saint-Malo).
    • Using the same method, books may be filtered by Subject and by Subject: About a person, such as Hitler or Pétain.
  • All books in the collection from a specific publisher:
    • For all books that were published by the Editions de Minuit, simply perform a search for 'Chadwyck-Healey Liberation Collection, 1944-1946' and 'éditions de minuit'.
    • This search can be replicated with any other publisher in the collection.
    • For those interested in publishers and printers, we have prepared an additional page with some further publication information, including lists of the most common publishers and printers in the collection.
  • All books in the collection published in a specific year:
    • Sort the list by Date, in the Refine options on the right-hand side, or search for a specific date, using the Creation date fields.
    • This will turn up some interesting results, because although the collection aims to collect books that were published in 1944, 1945 and 1946, we have included some key works that fall just outside the scope of the collection. In addition, some books are republications of earlier works, or for some other reasons contain copyright, publication or printing dates outside of the strict scope of this collection; this helps to explain the broader date range than might be expected.
  • All books in the collection that are predominantly illustrated. We can supply lists of artists, illustrators and photographers featuring in the Liberation collection.
  • When cataloguing these books, we make a note of any that include an original belly band (the loose strip of paper that wraps around the book, illustrated in one of our blog posts). See our list of books with belly bands.

Lists of books by genre

Please note that these lists are accurate as of January 2017, and are not constantly updated. They are indicative lists which help to provide an idea of the scope and variety of the collection. If you find these lists to be useful and would like us to update them for you, please don't hesitate to contact us.

For further information about using our iDiscover catalogue, please see the help documentation; for any queries relating to searching the collection, please do not hesitate to contact us.