LibGuides: Modern Languages: Resources for Your Major: French

Books & Web Resources

Books
Web Sources

ABU: la Bibliothèque Universelle Access to free public domain texts in French.
Digital Public Library of America The Digital Public Library of America brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world. It strives to contain the full breadth of human expression, from the written word, to works of art and culture, to records of America’s heritage, to the efforts and data of science.
HathiTrust HathiTrust provides access to millions of digitized materials from around the world.
LibriVox
LibriVox audiobooks are free for anyone to listen to on their computers, iPods or other mobile device, or to burn onto a CD. Titles on LibriVox are in the public domain and include a wide array of classic literature.
Open Library Open Library is a project of the non-profit Internet Archive, and has been funded in part by a grant from the California State Library and the Kahle/Austin Foundation. It makes over 1,000,000 free ebook versions of classic literature available at your fingertips.
Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg offers over 36,000 free ebook versions of titles in the public domain to download to your PC, Kindle, Android, iOS or other portable device. Choose between ePub, Kindle, HTML and simple text formats.

One of the best ways to discover the perfect source for your topic is to browse the library stacks by call number range. Each call number range represents a particular subject and all of the books on a particular topic will be located in the same general area on the shelves. So if you want a book on the French language, go to the call number range beginning with PC2001 to see what we have!

LC Call Number	Subject
DC 16-801	France. Andorra. Monaco
F 1035.8	Maritime provinces. Atlantic coast of Canada
F 1036-1040	Nova Scotia. Acadia
F 1051-1055	Quebec
F 1900-1941	Haiti (Island). Hispaniola. Haiti (Republic)
F 2151	French West Indies
F 2441-2471	French Guiana
PC 2001-3761	French Language
PQ 1-3999	French Literature

The ARTFL Project The ARTFL Project is a consortium-based service that provides its members with access to North America's largest collection of digitized French resources.
fabula: la recherche en littérature. Fabula is an association of researchers (the 1901 non-profit association law regime) interested in the link between literary theory and history.
French Internet Resources A comprehensive guide created by the Yale University Library.
French Literature: Encyclopedia Brittanica Find an in-depth overview of French literature from the Middle Ages to today.
L’Académie Française The role of the French Academy is to take care of the French language and to perform acts of patronage.
Ménestrel: Médiévistes sur l'InterNet Medieval Studies website.
Île en île Promotes the information and cultural resources of the French-speaking island world.
French Culture From the French Embassy in the US, find out about French culture.

French-Language Search Engines

Use these search engines to find additional French-language resources on the web.

Google France This is the French-language version of Google.

How Similar Are Québec French and Metropolitan French?

Background Sources

Academic Search Ultimate
- Why search here?
  Academic Search Ultimate is a great place to start your search for both popular and scholarly articles on almost any topic.
- What's included?
  It contains a large number of journals, the majority of which are peer-reviewed, from numerous subject areas. This resource features mostly full text content, and goes as far back as 1865.
Credo Reference
- Why search here?
  Credo Reference is a searchable collection of over 500 reference books across a wide variety of subjects from top publishers such as Cambridge University Press, Wiley and Elsevier.
- What's included?
  Use Credo to help define your topic and then use the links on topic pages to discover more in-depth information in books and journals, find thousands of art images and connect your ideas using concept mapping.
Gale Literary Sources
- Why search here?
  Gale Literary Sources brings together several literary databases in a new digital environment that allows researchers, faculty and students to search across these resources to discover and analyze content in new ways.
- What's included?
  Gale Literary Sources provides combined access to Literature Criticism Online, Literature Resource Center, Gale eBooks, and Contemporary Authors Online. Search it to find thousands of articles on literature as well as background information about authors, historical trends, critical theory, and much more.
Gale eBooks
- Why search here?
  Gale eBooks (formally Gale Virtual Reference Library) is a searchable online general reference collection. You can search across all the reference books or select a subject area.
- What's included?
  Gale eBooks includes titles in the arts, biography, business, education, the environment, history, information and publishing, law, literature, medicine, multicultural studies, religion, science and the social sciences.
JSTOR
- Why search here?
  JSTOR provides access to a wide variety of scholarly journals and monographs in the humanities, social sciences and sciences. Use JSTOR to find historical information rather than current articles.
- What's included?
  Thousands of full-text scholarly articles, some dating back to the 1800s.
MLA International Bibliography This link opens in a new window
- Why search here?
  MLA Bibliography includes two parts: MLA Bibliography and MLA Directory of Periodicals, which are both produced by the Modern Language Association. These sources focus on literature, language and linguistics, folklore, literary theory & criticism and dramatic arts, but also include other subjects.
- What's included?
  MLA Bibliography provides citations for journal articles, books, essay collections, working papers, dissertations, etc.

Open Library of the Humanities The Open Library of Humanities (OLH) publishes open access scholarship with no author-facing article processing charges (APCs). All of its academic articles are subject to rigorous peer review and the scholarship they publish showcases some of the most dynamic research taking place in the humanities disciplines today – from classics, modern languages and cultures, philosophy, theology and history, to political theory, sociology, anthropology, film and new media studies, and digital humanities.

Project MUSE
- Why search here?
  Project MUSE contains scholarly articles from major journals in the Social Sciences and Humanities as well as ebooks.
- What's included?
  Full-text scholarly articles and ebooks on literature and criticism, history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, education, political science, gender studies, economics and more.

Afrik.com Afrik.com is a news gateway for Africa and the Maghreb. It provides a daily log containing information on current events, culture, economy, sports, business and more.
Aujourd'hui en France Aujourd'hui en France is the national edition of Le Parisien and is the second-largest regional newspaper in circulation in France.
La Libre La Libre is a French-language newspaper from Belgium.
LaPresse.ca Based in Montreal, La Presse is the main news source for French Canada and includes regional, provincial, national and international news.
Le Devoir Le Devoir is the only independent large-circulation newspaper in Quebec and one of the few in Canada.
Le Figaro Le Figaro is the second-largest national newspaper in France after Aujourd'hui en France and before Le Monde and is one of the three French newspapers of record. It is the oldest still-existing newspaper in France.
Le Figaro Archive Digitized issues of Le Figaro from 1826 to 1942.
Le Monde Le Monde is one of three French Newspapers of record and has traditionally focused on offering analysis and opinion and offers thoughtful interpretation of current events.
Open Access Directory: Languages and Literatures
Identify electronic journals in the fields of Languages and Literatures that are scholarly, peer-reviewed, full text, and accessible without cost. This is not a searchable database.

The American Library in Paris The American Library in Paris was established in 1920 under the auspices of the American Library Association, and has grown since then into the largest English-language lending library on the European continent.
Catalogue general des livres imprimes de la Bibliotheque nationale Catalog for the French national library. In French.
France in America /France en Amérique A bilingual digital library made available by the Library of Congress. It explores the history of the French presence in North America from the first decades of the 16th century to the end of the 19th century.