UAR Centre for Breton and Celtic Research (CRBC) – Documentation

Antoine Borzeix

About the UAR Centre for Breton and Celtic Research (CRBC) – Documentation (UAR UBO-CNRS 3554)

The Centre for Breton and Celtic Research (CRBC) is a Support and Research Unit (UAR) of the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the University of Western Brittany (UBO).

The Yves-Le Gallo Library (UAR 3554), which is open to the public free of charge, has a large collection of specialist documentation on Brittany and the Celtic regions: 73,000 works (including 8,000 in Breton and its various dialects), 2,390 journal issues (260 active subscriptions), photographs, maps, postcards and an audio archive of 16,000 sound recordings.

The library collection also holds around one hundred archival items of different contributors to Breton culture, including Pierre-Jakez Hélias, Anatole Le Braz, Gwenc’hlan Le Scouëzec, the bulk of the Plozévet Coordinated Action archives, and the 450 linear meters worth of archival material comprising over 170 paper, literary, political and academic materials.

On 1 January 2012, the Yves-Le Gallo Library became a CNRS mixed research unit (UMS) (UAR 3554). The library is a member of the Consortium of Archives of Ethnologists (the Huma-Num French Very Large Research Infrastructure – TGIR) and was awarded the four-year Collex-Persée label in 2019 for its nationally renowned collections.

73,000 works including 16,000 pre-1960 issues (sixteen from the 16th century, 101 from the 17th, 393 from the 18th and 6,101 from the 19th), 8,000 in Breton and 1,680 in Celtic languages.
2,390 back issues of periodicals (250 Breton-language journals) including a heritage collection of 300 old articles predating 1914 from the local and regional press; the modern collection consists of 260 subscriptions.
Around fifteen audio archive collections (almost 200 linear metres), 70% of which have been digitized.
Image library: several thousand old postcards or glass plates (from the Louis Thomas, De Mougon, De Saint-Père, and René Couffon collections), 300 posters including 100 from the period 1915 to 1950 and 50 from 1810 to 1914.
3,500 maps, including 1,750 old maps.
Grey literature: 500 theses and 2,200 Master-level dissertations.

The CRBC Yves-Le Gallo Library provides access to the bulk of documentation on Brittany and the Celtic regions and is a research site and resource centre for numerous French and international researchers. Over time it has also assumed a heritage role.

View the Library’s Documentary Policy Charter.

The CRBC is committed to an open data approach for the data produced by the Library and lecturer-researchers via CRBC Open Science and its three components:

CRBC Digital Library
CRBC Dataset, the Centre’s quantitative and qualitative data platform.
PRELIB (Research project on Breton-language literature) database on contributors to Breton literature.
CRBC Open Science was recognized as a platform by the CNRS Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences (InSS) in 2021.

CRBC Digital Library

CRBC’s digital library contains archival documents kept by the CRBC and its institutional partners (Historical Defence Service (SHD, north-west division), Les Amours Jaunes heritage library in Morlaix, and the Finistère departmental archives, as well as documents from private collections.

CRBC Dataset

Quantitative and qualitative data can be downloaded from the CRBC Dataset and used in accordance with the Etalab Open Licence version 2.0. Structured Query Language (SQL) can also be used to visualize data as charts and maps. For example, displaying a birthplace map of people listed in PRELIB.

Find out more about using the CRBC Dataset. About the CRBC Dataset (1).

The following resources provide more information on SQL language: From SQL queries to Excel files, an introduction to relational databases (Des fichiers Excel au SQL, Introduction aux bases de données relationnelles) and the slideshow from the Outils du quanti seminar (10 February 2020 session) for examples of SQL queries on the PRELIB dataset of the CRBC Dataset.

PRELIB (Research project on Breton-language literature) database on contributors to Breton literature

From a Sociology of Literature perspective, the image of the writer as an isolated, unconstrained genius is replaced by that of an individual existing alongside the social and economic conditions of the time (Bernard Lahire, La condition littéraire. La double vie des écrivains, Paris, La découverte, 2006, p. 26).

PRELIB is a prosopographic database of contributors to Breton literature and their literary output. Its objective is to identify the extent to which family environment, schooling, membership of a political association or party, mentorship and intellectual stimulation, and being part of a group – i.e., everything that at some level is part of social determinism and of individual sociability –, can spark and possibly sustain the desire, will and need to write in Breton.

L'UAR 3554 participe à l'enrichissement des catalogues suivants :

L'UAR est partenaire de :

Soutiens financiers

Les soutiens financiers sont multiples : Ministère de l’Enseignement supérieur et de la recherche, CNRS, Ministère de la Culture, Université de Bretagne occidentale, Conseil départemental du Finistère, Conseil régional de Bretagne, Brest métropole océane.