Clay to the cloud: an archeology of catalogs (2nd millennium BC - 21th century.)

A collaboration between the Mazarine Library and the Library of Geneva, this exhibition explores the history of inventory practices, classification, cataloging and ordering of knowledge. Clay tablets of the dematerialized catalogs now in the "cloud" Carolingian inventories to Renaissance literature, it shows that the catalog is closely linked to literacy practices, and serves functions as diverse that contradictory research texts, conservation and storage, transport a collection, the censorship of books, the release of a fund, the trade and the movement of the writing ...


Exhibition catalog: under the direction of Frédéric Barbier, Thierry Dubois and Yann Sordet. - Paris: Bibliothèque Mazarine; Geneva Library; Publishing Ash, 2015.

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