Research Guides: French and Francophone Studies (Advanced): Books, film, and more

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This guide is an in-depth listing of French and Francophone resources available to students and faculty at the University of Minnesota.

Tips for Finding Books and Book Chapters

When looking for books and book chapters:
1. First, search Libraries Search and/or the Library Catalog which will show what UMN Libraries have.
2. If not found, then search WorldCat which includes materials held at other libraries. Click on "Request via Interlibrary Loan" to make a request.
What is the difference between Libraries Search and the Library Catalog? Libraries Search includes all items in the Library Catalog but it also includes articles. The Library Catalog includes print books, eBooks, DVDs, journals, and other formats but NOT articles.
With Advanced Searching, you can limit results to a specific languge, date range and more.
If you can't find a book chapter, you can submit a book chapter request via interlibrary loan. You'll get a PDF scan usually within a week. This is a look quicker than requesting the whole book.
You can request digital delivery scans of parts of books in UMN Collections. To do so fill out an interlibrary loan/digital delivery request

Academic Video Online
Academic Video Online (AVON) delivers 70,000+ videos, on a range of topics including anthropology, business, counseling, film, health, history, music, and more.
Digital Content Library
Consists of around 300,000 images, videos, audio, and other formats from teaching and research collections across the University of Minnesota. This is particularly useful source for foreign language film. Some items are password protected because of copyright considerations and can be used for educational purposes only.The DCL is run by LATIS.
Docuseek2
Find documentaries and social issue films and view online.
Libraries Search
Search the University of Minnesota Libraries to find books, scholarly journal articles, news, magazines, media, and other items in the University's collection. View this tutorial to learn how to go from a general idea to a very precise set of results of journal articles and scholarly materials.
WorldCat
Find books, journals, articles, maps, music scores, sound recordings, films, theses/dissertations, machine-readable data files, and any other materials available in libraries worldwide. All subject areas are covered. Request items through Interlibrary Loan using the ILLiad link on each item's record. A mobile version of this database is available. Limited to 65 simultaneous users.

For additional catalogs, consult the European Library Catalogs

British Library
Allows you to search the British Library's main catalog, website, and articles
French National Library (BnF)
Main catalog for the French National Library (Bibliothèque nationale de France; BnF)

Europeana
Single access point to millions of artworks, artefacts, books, films and music from European museums, galleries, libraries and archives.
HathiTrust Digital Library
HathiTrust provides access to millions of books and other materials. Full text searching of most books is available and books in the public domain (generally older books) can be freely viewed and/or downloaded. Books still in copyright have more limited access. Users with print-reading disabilities can apply for special access to digitized works by emailing wilsref@umn.edu.
Gallica
Digital library of French and francophone culture maintained by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Contains numerous electronic texts, images, maps, animation, and sound files of French and other publications in history, literature, science, philosophy, law, economics, and political science.
Center for Research Libraries
CRL holds over four million newspapers, journals, dissertations, archives, government publications and other traditional and digital resources for research and teaching. Holdings include such diverse materials as 800,000 doctoral dissertations (including those of Albert Einstein, Dag Hammarskjold and other Nobel laureates), some of the earliest African-American newspapers and the 100,000-plus-page archive of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge security force. Emphasis is on materials produced outside the United States, and the Center has special strength in publications and archives from many developing nations.

Last Updated: Aug 21, 2025 8:18 PM