Shared heritage is a program launched by the National Library of France in 2016 to gather outstanding documents related to the relations between France and the world on dedicated online libraries. The contents are from the collections of BNF, of similar heritages libraries from all over the world, such as the National Diet Library of Japan, the National Library of Poland, and from the collections of research and academics institutions, as the Oriental Library of Saint Joseph University. Those online libraries also aim to preserve and save endanger heritages. Currently, four collections are online, but five others will be launched in the following years: France in America, France-India, France-Vietnam and Trans-Siberian,.
Bibliothèques d’Orient (Oriental Libraries)
Launched in September 2017, Bibliothèques d’Orient is the second digital library created in the frames of the Shared Heritage project. Nine libraries and heritage institutions worked together to gather over 7000 documents recounting the historical relationships between France and countries from the Near-East:
The content is from the collections of those institutions and is very diverse: the website hosts digitalized sacred books, manuscripts, travel writings, newspapers, prints, maps, photographs... Most of the documents are from the 19th and 20th centuries, although older contents can be founds, such as Qumran manuscripts or early Quranic manuscripts The documents are split in seven categories corresponding to essential topics of Oriental studies: Crossroads ; Religions, Communities, Knowledge, Imaginary and Personalities. Those categories are dived in more specific ones.
France-Japon was initially part of a virtual exhibition co-organized with the National Diet Library of Japan to celebrate the relationships between the two countries. The exhibition opened on December, 2014, for the anniversary of the foundation of the French-Japanese House of Tokyo, in 1924. The website is now one of the Shared Heritage digital libraries where can be found digitalized issues of the Japon Artistique published by Siegfried Bing, Japanese prints, the Manga of Hokusai, early photographs of Japan...
La France au Brésil is a digital library launched by the National Library of Brazil and the French National Library in 2009 as a closing of the year dedicated to the celebration of the relationships between the two countries. As the most recent websites of Shared Heritage, the content from the collections of the two institutions is split in main categories reflecting important topics and moments of the relations, such as France Antarctique or Equinoctial France. It also gathers documents on scientific missions and exchanges, as the foundation of the School Mines of Ouro Preto by Claude-Henri Gorceix in 1875, travel writings, French writers inspired by Brazil or even exiled there, as Georges Bernanos.
