Digital libraries
Although initially developed for researchers, digitised content now provides users beyond the university environment access to rare and/or difficult-to-access documents.
History of science
The IRIS digital library offers a window into the history of modern science and techniques. It is the fruit of close collaboration between the university libraries and science historians from the University of Lille.
IRIS comprises digitised content dating from the 19th and early 20th centuries, with a current total of more than 3,200 documents. Harvesting work by Gallica, the digital section of France’s national library (BnF), and its partners has helped improve the visibility of this content.
IRIS has also expanded the number of its users with virtual exhibitions linked to a range of physical exhibitions on scientific culture and other national events such as the Fête de la science. IRIS’s partners include the natural history museum in Lille, the Centre for the history of science and techniques (CHST) in Liège, and the Société Géologique du Nord.
This inclusive approach is also reflected in the success of the "Retour vers le futur !" competition, developed in collaboration with the regional academic authority and which saw the participation of seven secondary schools for its second edition.
Regional history of the Nord and Pas-de-Calais
The NordNum digital library was developed through collaboration between the university libraries and researchers, particularly from the Institut de Recherches Historiques du Septentrion. It offers a corpus on regional history from the 19th and 20th centuries, with a particular focus on religious art, industrial and textile heritage, the First World War and the University of Lille.
Since 2017, the University of Lille’s heritage collections have also been added to NordNum and can now be viewed, like all of the collection, on Gallica and the Isidore humanities & social science research platform.
NordNum contains 1,246 documents, including the primary sources of the legal system developed in the Flanders region, digitised as part of an initiative by the BnF and Cujas library.
Together with the University of Lille’s digital library, NordNum will continue to house resources predating the 19th century to reflect the needs of researchers and projects put in place.