USMA Library Homepage: Foreign Languages & Literature: French

Welcome to the general French page! Below you'll find links to French databases where you can find journal articles on French topics and a brief guide to browsing books on various French topics on our shelves. You are also able to search Scout or the Library Catalog; all our books, ebooks, and journals can be found that way.

French Databases at the USMA Library

Below you will find quick links to some of the most commonly accessed resources, you can always access the entire list of Foreign Language Databases here!

If you are looking for Films in French, check out

Academic Video Online (AVON) This link opens in a new window
View documentaries, educational films, and news clips in a wide range of subject areas. Transcripts available.
Feature Films for Education This link opens in a new window
This collection offers hundreds of full-length feature films for educational instructional purposes. It focuses on both current and hard-to-find titles, including literary adaptations, blockbusters, classics, environmental titles, foreign films, social issues, animation studies, Academy Award winners, and more.
Swank Digital Campus This link opens in a new window
Stream access to feature films, documentaries, and television shows.
We license individual titles from Swank for course reserves. Faculty may request additional titles within the platform. The lead time to fulfill requests varies, taking at least several working days and sometimes much longer.

To read recent news articles or magazines in French, check out

ABI/INFORM This link opens in a new window
Covering business and management topics, this resource contains full-text journals and much sought-after titles from the business press as well as key trade publications, dissertations, conference proceedings, and market reports.
PressReader This link opens in a new window
Provides thousands of newspapers every single day, extracting text and images and making articles instantly translatable, searchable, and easy to read on mobile devices.Coverage is typically the most recent 90 days.

If you are doing research in French, check out

Bibliography of Asian Studies This link opens in a new window
Explore a major multi-disciplinary index for the study of East, Southeast, and South Asia. It contains citations for Western-language journal articles, review articles, conference proceedings, chapters in edited volumes, and Festschrift published worldwide that relate to the study of Asia. The database aims to cover a broad range of subjects, with a special focus on the humanities and social sciences. Some of the subjects covered include anthropology, art, economics, history, language, literature, political science, religion, and sociology.
Early English Books Online : EEBO This link opens in a new window
Ebooks in many subject areas, including English literature, history, philosophy, linguistics, theology, music, fine arts, education, mathematics, and science.
Gale Primary Sources This link opens in a new window
Search across all available Gale Primary Sources databases:
Archives Unbound
Eighteenth Century Collections Online
Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers
Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals
Sabin Americana: History of the Americas, 1500-1926
The Economist Historical Archive, 1843-2015
The Making of Modern Law: U.S. Supreme Court Records and Briefs, 1823–1978
The Times Digital Archive
U.S. Declassified Documents Online
HathiTrust Digital Library This link opens in a new window
Collection of millions of scanned books and other publications. Allows searching of the complete texts of a wide range of books. Login with westpoint.edu credentials to enable enhanced downloading.
Historical Abstracts with Full Text This link opens in a new window
Covers the history of the world (excluding the United States and Canada) from 1450 to the present, including world history, military history, women's history, history of education, and more. Provides indexing of more than 2,500 journals, with full text for more than 300.
JSTOR (includes Books on JSTOR) This link opens in a new window
Provides access to scholarly journals and books in a wide range of disciplines.
User's Guide: https://support.jstor.org/hc/en-us/articles/360000063528-An-Introduction-to-Searching-on-JSTOR
Periodicals Archive Online This link opens in a new window
Explore an archive of hundreds of digitized journals published in the arts, humanities and social sciences.
Policy File Index This link opens in a new window
Citations and abstracts, most with links to full text, for U.S. public policy research from over 350 think tanks, non-governmental organizations, research institutes, university centers, advocacy groups, and other entities.

Provided by the Class of 1946.
ProQuest This link opens in a new window
Provides access to a wide range of databases, many with full text.
State Papers Online, 1509-1714 and 1714-1782 This link opens in a new window
Browse government records from early modern Britain and Europe, including many documents from the National Archives of the UK. Examples include the official records of the secretaries of state serving the ruling monarch of the day, encompassing every facet of early modern government, including social and economic affairs, law and order, religious policy, crown possessions, and intelligence.

Gallica
Gallica is one of the largest digital libraries available free of charge on the Internet. It offers access to all types of documents: printed matter (books, press and magazines) in image and text mode, manuscripts, sound documents, iconographic documents, maps and plans, videos.
Gallica is aimed at all readers, from the curious to the bibliophile, from high school students to university students.
ORBi, le répertoire institutionnel de l’Université de Liège
Virtual institutional repository from l’Université de Liège
Patrimones Partages
Bringing together a set of digital libraries constituted by the BnF, the Patrimoines Partagée collection aims to bear witness to the relations maintained between France and the world over the centuries, and highlights this history in a global approach. This collection is regularly enriched with new partners and horizons, and testifies to the depth and diversity of the BnF's collections.

To date, seven libraries are offered: Libraries of the Orient, France-South Asia (in beta version), France-Brazil, France-China, France-Poland, France-Vietnam and France in the Americas. In addition, there is the virtual exhibition France-Japan, one of the precursor projects of this collection.
PERSEE
Persee.fr provides free and open access to complete collections of scholarly publications (journals, books, conference proceedings, serial publications, primary sources, etc.) and to a range of research and exploitation tools.
RetroNews
To increase the digitization of the press and make these valuable resources even more accessible, BnF-Partenariats, the BnF subsidiary, has designed and developed a new online service entirely dedicated to the old press: retronews.fr. Several hundred titles are digitized, enriched and put online each month on the site in order to expose them to as many people as possible.

French Web Resources

These resources are outside of USMA, but they still contain valuable information. They can be helpful when researching or practicing in French.

Research Resources:

Digital Commons Network: French and Francophonic Language and Literature
European Patent Office
French News Online
French National Library: Bibliothèque nationale de France
- Gallica: Droit, économie,poliique
Government of France
ICJ International Commission of Jurists
Library of Congress collections:
New York Public Library
- Candide, ou, l’optimisme / traduit de l’allemand de Mr. le docteur Ralph Initial Printing 1759
- Evangelie naprestol’noe (Altar Gospels)
- Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi’s journal (Creator of the Statue of Liberty)
- Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi Letter to his Mother
- Handwritten letter from Toussaint Louverture (ca. 1743–1803) to the French Minister of Marine and the Colonies
- Musée des dames et des demoiselles
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) iLibrary
Television Resources
- LangMedia videos from international students 1999-2002.
World Bank Open Data

Practice Resources:

Sublearning Quiz yourself by translating subtitles from your favorite movies.
Television:
- TV5 Monde an international channel in French.
  - Langue Française language courses and practice.

Practice Reading Comprehension:

All About French Hundreds of French texts to read with English translation and slow French audio from natives.
French Children's Stories free audio versions complete with transcription and translation for some of the most well-known French children's fairytales.
French Reading for Beginners originally published in 1899, this reader contains notes and vocabulary for the French language beginner.
Kwiziq: French Reading Practice A collection of interactive reading exercises with English translations.
Lawless French Short articles about travel, culture, and practical information about life in France.
Lingola Reading and listening comprehension exercises.
Lingua French texts for Beginners and Intermediates to practice reading and comprehension skills.
The French Experiment Children's stories in French.

West Point Center for Oral History: French Resources:

Please note that the resources listed in this section are hosted by groups separate from the USMA Library. The USMA Library can NOT guarantee access or resolve connection issues to these resources.

French Books in the USMA Library

Browse the shelves, head up to the east side of the 4th floor and find the call numbers that start with "PC." Here's a general listing of subject areas:

PC2001-3761 French
PC2700-(3708) Dialects. Provincialisms
PC2813-(2898) Old French
PC3201-3366 Provencal (Old)
PC3371-3420.5 Modern patois of South France
PC3420.8-3495 Langue d'oc dialects
PC3721-3761 Slang. Argot