Cities and Towns of France

Library Books

Bienvenue a la bibliothèque! We have a small selection of books from Uni's own collection that may be of help to you as you research a particular city or town in France. These are collected on top of the island in the library's reference section. Some books cover “standard” geography (maps, locations of towns and historical sites, exports, etc.), and others cover particular aspects of French culture like cooking. Unfortunately, many of these books are not specific at the level of individual towns or cities, but they may tell you general facts about the region in which your town or city is located.

If you have the time to wait for them or are feeling adventurous, you can look in the online catalog for more specific books about your town. The University has a very, very, very large collection of maps (most of which are in the Map and Geography Library, on the fourth floor of the Main Library building), and also has many books about culture, history, politics, and other topics from particular places in France. Please talk to Ms. Harris one of her graduate assistants for help in searching -- you can either request books through the catalog and have them sent across campus (takes 4-5 business days), or find out which university library they're in and go get them yourself!

Magazines

We do have a number of French magazines, but these will be difficult to use to find information about specific places. Instead, you might want to search a database of magazine articles like Infotrac or EBSCO using the name of your town/region/department as either a keyword or a subject (for example, the word “Provence” used in Infotrac returns more than 70 results as a subject word and more than 500 as a keyword).

You might want to search in the Lexis-Nexis database of magazine and journal articles. You will want to choose the GUIDED NEWS SEARCH option. Two kinds of searches there could be good:

First option (for a mixture of English and French-language sources from all over Europe) -- under “select a news category,” choose “world news.” Under “select a news source,” choose “European news sources.” Then, enter your search term(s) (like the name of your city or a person from that city) and run the search.

Second option (for results in French from French periodicals)-- under “select a news category,” choose “Non-English Language news.” Under “select a news source,” choose “French language news.” Then, enter your search term(s) (like the name of your city or a person from that city) and run the search.

Web Sites

Tourisme en France
A major site put together by the French tourism industry, this site allows you to look up information on more than 3,600 possible destinations in France. You can also plan trips and learn about upcoming events. A must-visit site.

Franceguide.com
The official tourism-promotion site of the French government's Tourism Office. Like the site above, this one helps you plan trips all over France. Very nicely designed. Also a must-visit site.

Le Site du Premiere Ministre: Portail du Gouvernement Français
The main, official site of the French Government -- a good place to get started for many kinds of statistics, names of elected officials, etc.

Sites Publique Français
A nice listing of major governmental and non-governmental groups in France.

Miscellaneous sites about France collected by the Librarians' Index to the Internet
Some of these sites cover specific places and/or topics you may not find covered anywhere else. It may be worth a quick scroll through here to see if this site can help you fill in gaps in the information you need.

Country Profile of France from the Economist Magazine
Includes maps and a very large amount of basic, accurate information about France in general (exchange rates, weather, history, politics, yada, yada, yada). Information on specific towns? Non. Good background on the country or regions of the country? Oui.

Customized maps of your French city/town/area
Zoom in, zoom out, and get special printable versions of maps for just about any city.

Weather information
For weather forecasts and historical weather information in English (some French locations not covered), try http://www.weather.com/common/welcomepage/world.html?from=globalnav

For weather forecasts and historical weather information in French (most locations covered), try http://fr.weather.com/

Vive la France!

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