Bibliothèque publique d’information

The project for a large public library in the centre of Paris came about in the 1960s. When Georges Pompidou imagined building a modern art museum on the Beaubourg site, the idea to combine it with a large library became obvious. The Museum and the Library (Bibliothèque publique d’information, known as Bpi) opened in 1977. Access to the Bpi is free for all. The Bpi’s collections are acquired along three main lines: encyclopaedias, news and lifelong education (almost 430,000 documents)