Indian and Central Asian Studies Library

The library of the Institut d'études indiennes - founded in 1927 on the initiative of Émile Senart, Alfred Foucher and Sylvain Lévi - houses a collection of over 70 000 volumes of printed works, including 600 journal titles (40 in progress) and a selection of dictionaries, databases and online resources concerning the Indian world (Indianized Central Asia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka) : sanskrit texts, Indo-Aryan and Indo-Iranian border languages, Tamil texts, philology, linguistics, political and religious history of classical India, etc.

In addition, there are some 100 manuscripts, 50 works of art, scientific archives (S. Lévi, L. Renou, P. Reichert, G. Fussman, M. Biardeau, Ch. Bouy), a map library of some 2, ,700 maps (including almost complete coverage of the Indian peninsula at 1 : 50 000 and 1 : 250 000) and a photo library with over 40, ,000 images. With Salamandre, the Collège de France has launched a digitization program to make its heritage collections accessible to a wider public. The entire art collection, as well as part of the photo library, audiovisual archives and manuscripts from the Sylvain Lévi collection, are already available for consultation.

The library offers 58 seats, including three carrels and two rooms for group work in a reading room shared by the five Asian Worlds libraries.

In October 2022, the library was awarded the " CollEx-collectionsd'excellence " label by the Collex-Persée scientific interest group. This label identifies research-level holdings that are remarkable for their scope and originality, and enables the labeled library to be associated with national projects for mapping and digitizing holdings, or to participate in calls for projects involving researchers.

Access reserved for teachers, researchers, doctoral and master's students on the recommendation of their research supervisor.

The library is also open to people who, for professional or personal reasons, need to consult its collections from time to time.

The reader's card is issued on justification of research, and is valid for one year.

Access to collections :
Some of the collections are freely accessible in the reading room. In-store collections are available on request.

Interlibrary loan (ILL):
This service enables registered readers to borrow documents not held at the Collège de France from outside libraries. Requests are centralized by Collège de France's Department of Libraries, Archives and Collections (DBAC), and any reader wishing to obtain a document is invited to write to the following address:

Additional services :

• Internet access via wifi, computer workstations for consulting catalogs and online resources.

• Information by mail, e-mail or telephone, online and on-site bibliographic searches.

Books and periodicals are listed in the Omnia catalog.

The library is open Monday to Friday from 10 h to 19 h.