The International Contemporary Documentation Library

The International Contemporary Documentation Library (BDIC in French), which was first located in the Vincennes chateau, was born out of the initiative of a couple of industrialists, who in 1914, started collecting all the available documentation on World War I. In the 1930s, under the guidance of Pierre Renouvin, the founder of the French School of History and International Relations, the library became part of the University of Paris and began widening the scope of the collection. In 1970, it moved to the campus of the University of Nanterre and the iconographic section, which meanwhile had become the “Museum of the Two World Wars” to the National Invalides Museum, and became in 1987, the “Museum of Contemporary History”.

The BDIC was a joint documentation center for the Universities of Paris I, II, VIII and X, which became the CADIST in 1982, (Center for the Acquisition and Distribution of Scientific and Technical Information) for “International relations and the Contemporary World.” It has become a pilot organization in the field of the history of the contemporary world thanks to its networks and to the documentation, which is often one of a kind, as well as its collection policy and the scientific and research activities it fosters.