The Schoelcher Library

A bit of history:
In 1883, Victor Schœlcher, then Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Marine and Colonies, Martinique's representative at the National Assembly, donated to Martinique its rich library of 9534 books and musical scores. The Library's collection was then enriched thanks to the donation of Mr. Cochinat, the colony's first curator, with 11,000 additional volumes. Unfortunately, many of these works were lost in a major fire in 1890. The saved volumes were then stored in the building built for their preservation by Pierre-Henri Picq.

Pierre-Henri Picq's approach, inspired by ancient, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian and Oriental architectural traditions, also had to meet the requirements of tropical climates and the constraints of swampy and high seismic risk areas.

The curators of the Schœlcher library successively implemented the Department's desire to build a tool for the conservation of collective memory, automatically creating a heritage fund whose wealth is confirmed every day.

Study and research have been privileged. However, this ambition was accompanied very early by the necessary dialogue between the world of scholarly research and the common culture.

Over the years, the various fields of knowledge have been organized around specific poles:
Reference Fund
General Fund
Youth Library
Caribbean Fund.

A place of study and research, the Schoelcher Library is also a place of intellectual production. In order for the public to appropriate the results of knowledge as advanced as it can be, a cultural programme is being set up to enable the boundaries between the life of the city and intellectual life, heritage and modernity, literary and scientific culture to be crossed.

Major cultural events are organized: Book Festival, Internet Festival, Heritage Day, May 22nd, Children's Storytelling Festivals...

Today the library's missions have extended to specific missions:
In the direction of the visually impaired
Mission to combat illiteracy
Mission to fight against illectronism, areas of competence which are organised and proposed in the Schoelcher Library annex, at the Pavillon Bougenot (Departmental Digital Public Space), dedicated to new technologies.

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