Tracing the public of the first Parisian library for art and archaeology: on the readership at Doucet’s library (1910-1914)

Abstract

In 1909, the grand couturier Jacques Doucet opened a library dedicated to art history and archaeology. Soon this library, although the result of a private initiative, gained a reputation for scholarly depth and utility, reflected in its reader’s register. The nearly 1,500 individual registration cards that survive from its early years provide documentation of the public that patronized the first art history library in France. Geolocation of the individual readers provides information on their socio-cultural backgrounds, while network analysis reveals personal and institutional relationships between the library and other institutions such as museums, libraries and universities. A more precise focus on selected readers helps to establish a prosopography that establishes their proximity or heterogeneity. This paper aims to demonstrate the unique role of this institution in the scientific and institutional landscape, both national and international, at a time when art history was emerging as a scientific field.