Specialized periodicals

Specialized periodicals complement the collection of books, with a wide range of titles suited to different applications and audiences. Periodicals are found on all of the library’s levels and some of them have been kept since they were started.

Themed periodicals

With nearly 1,600 journals, the library wishes to designate all of its encyclopedic domains. The collections of specialized journals are located near the information offices dedicated to the various disciplines.
Newspapers and news magazines are presented in the press area, on the first floor of the library. A large press collection is also available in digital format or in microfilm.

Collection diversity

Science and technology and social sciences are heavily featured as they represent more than 20% of journals available. The press and media make up 15% of journals offered, with newspapers representing a significant part (press space, level 1). In addition, art and leisure magazines make up 14%, languages and literature 8%, history and geography 9%, as well as philosophy, psychology and religion with 7% of magazines, also make up a large proportion of the collection. 

General interest magazines and academic journals

In each field, the Bpi offers both magazines for the general public such as Philosophie magazine or Première for philosophy and cinema and more specialized magazines such as Les Études philosophies or Trafic,
a film review without images, as well as professional journals such as the Journal of the nurse, Modern dairy production or The New educational journal.

Among the journals in foreign languages, journals for the general public (The Economist, Times) also rub shoulders with scientific journals (New England Journal of Medicine, Review of English studies)

The encyclopaedism of the collections is also observed through journals devoted to countries more rarely represented, such as Etudes Celtiques, the Revue des Langues Romanes, the Revue des Etudes slaviques or Cinéma d’Amérique Latine, and through journals in various languages. . While 82% of journals are in French and 8% in English, the Bpi’s collections also offer multilingual journals (7%), as well as journals in German, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Arabic, Breton, Hebrew, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Serbian and Turkish.

Duration of the conversation

The shelf life of the journals, defined according to their periodicity and the durability of their content, is indicated on the locker and in the catalogue.
In the press area, dailies are kept for one month, weeklies for up to six months, and biannuals for up to five years. In law, economics and leisure, areas where content quickly becomes obsolete, the majority of journals are kept for at least 3 years. In arts, languages ​​and literatures, history-geography, philosophy, psychology and social sciences, the shelf life of the majority of journals is 10 years, 20 years or more.

The Bpi currently has a number of complete collections of journals, some of which are available on microfilm, such as Cahiers du Cinéma (since their creation in 1951), l’Avant-Scène Cinéma since 1961, Positif since 1952, the monthly literary journal Europe (since its created in 1923 or the Cahiers du Musée national d’art moderne since its creation in 1979.