Catalogs

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Summer Closure 2025

  • The research library will be closed from the evening of Saturday, July 12, through Monday, September 1 (inclusive).
  • The Jacques Kerchache Reading Room will remain open throughout the summer, following the museum’s regular hours. However, on Saturdays from July 15 to September 1 (inclusive), it will open at 13h instead of 10h30.
  • The archives consultation service will remain available by appointment, except from July 28 to August 1 (inclusive).

THE MUSEUM CATALOGUES

THE RESEARCH LIBRARY CATALOGUE

It includes references for all printed materials, audiovisual resources, and periodicals available in the research library. You can reserve them remotely for on-site consultation.

  • Browse the research library catalogue here ici

THE ARCHIVES CATALOGUE

Access references for files and documents covering the history of the museum's collections (full access to digitized files available on-site only).

THE OBJECTS AND IMAGE COLLECTION CATALOGUE

Find all records and images of the objects preserved by the museum, along with 410,000 online items from the photography and graphic arts collection.

Different types of materials accessible via the catalogs

Printed documents

  • 200,000 titles (20,000 open access) on the ethnology and history of the arts and civilizations of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas, in the original language or in French translation;
  • 11,000 volumes of rare and valuable works, from the end of the 16th to the 19th centuries: travelogs, scientific missions, original editions, annotated copies;
  • 4,600 periodicals, including 700 currently on subscription;
  • Theses in the fields of ethnology and anthropology supervised in France since 1985, including those supervised by the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS);
  • Private libraries of renowned ethnologists and anthropologists, including: Claude Lévi-Strauss, Marcel Mauss, Georges Condominas, etc.

Audio and Audiovisual Material

  • 6,000 CDs of world music and 6,000 DVDs of documentary ethnographic films and fictional films, including 2,350 online;
  • Original scientific collections, including the sound archives of ethnomusicologists such as Gilbert Rouget and film archives;
  • Lectures, concerts and performances recorded at the musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac.

Image Collections

700,000 images – photographs, posters, postcards, prints, watercolors and drawings – related to scientific missions and voyages around the world, as well as the history of the museum’s collections.

Archives and Collections Documentation

More than 88,000 records and 583,730 related digital documents which contain:

  • Collections materials: legal, administrative, technical and scientific documentation on the collections;
  • Public collections: musée des Colonies, musées de la France d’Outre-Mer, musée des Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie et musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac;
  • Private collections: ethnologists (Thérèse Rivière, Henry Reichlen, etc.), art historians (Lucien Stephan, etc.), gallery owners (Louis Carré, etc.), colonial administrators, curators, etc.

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Related resources

  • The terms of on-line usage

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