This year the summer field trip concentrated on libraries in central and eastern France. The main focus of our activity was the enormous pamphlet collection of the Bibliothèque Municipale in Grenoble, where the Director, Professor Pettegree, led a team of researchers on a three week trip. The Grenoble BM represented the last great pamphlet collection in France that we had not yet systematically surveyed, and the largest Bibliothèque Municipale collection still to be inspected. During the course of the trip we worked through around 1600 items, including many examples of regional print previously unknown to the project: many indeed were completely new discoveries.Time was also scheduled to make a final trip to the collection of the Bibliothèque Municipale in Lyon, the subject of systematic work for several years. Professor Pettegee and Dr Walsby spent one week there at the beginning of the trip, and Dr Hall and Mr John a second week after the Grenoble expedition. In additional to seeing high priority items not yet inspected, we managed, through the help of the staff, to survey further items recently accessioned in the Chomerat collection. We also surveyed a complete private collection, the Fonds Galle, donated to the Archives Départmentales in Lyon.
In the last week of the field trip shorter visits were also accomplished to other important collections in central France, including Moulins, Roanne, Autun, Valence, Cluny, and Bourg-en-Bresse. In Moulins and Roanne we continued work begun during a spring trip that also achieved a complete survey of relevant items in the BMU Clermont-Ferrand. The collection of the BM in Autun proved to be an exceptionally valuable collection, and in Bourg-en-Bresse we were able, with the help of library staff, to work up an inventory of some 285 items.
Meanwhile the project manager, Dr Wilkinson, continued his work with the collections of the Mazarine Library in Paris, and completed the project survey of the collections of the Bibliothèque de la Ville de Paris.
Sara Barker also worked for the project, in this case in a number of important collections in Switzerland. Our work with priority items in Geneva and Lausanne was hugely advanced during her four weeks of work for the project.