The Lady and the Antelope: Suzanne Briet's Contribution to the French Documentation Movement

During her thirty years at the Biblioth??que Nationale (BN), Suzanne Briet (1894???1989) made important theoretical, organizational, and institutional contributions to the documentation movement in France. This article attempts to place her documentation work within the context of the far-reaching reform of French libraries, with special attention to the transformation of the BN. Like her colleagues in special libraries, Briet embraced modernity and science. Because of her strong orientation toward humanistic scholarship, however, she viewed documentation service and bibliographic orientation as an enhancement rather than a rejection of the scholarly traditions of the national library. This article will focus on her efforts to integrate the innovative ideas of the documentation movement into the practice of librarianship at the Biblioth??que Nationale.published or submitted for publicatio