INED's library, document and archive collection at Campus Condorcet
When INED moved to Campus Condorcet in 2019, the Institute’s document collection became part of the on-campus library structure, the Humathèque. Where, exactly, is the Humathèque? Who can consult these archives and material?
Carine Deschamps, in charge of the Spaces-Populations-Societies section of the Humathèque’s Resources and Data Department, answered our questions.
What is in the INED collection?
The INED collection covers all disciplines that handle population questions: demography, of course, but also statistics, sociology, economics, history, geography, epidemiology, and health. France’s CollEx-Persée research infrastructure has awarded this material the status of “collection of excellence.”
The collection got underway in 1945, the year of INED’s founding. It was housed at INED, in the 20th arrondissement of Paris, until the move to Campus Condorcet in Aubervilliers, a town immediately north of Paris. At that time our library and archives joined approximately 50 other human and social science libraries that all together came to constitute the Humathèque.
How was the INED collection integrated into the Humathèque?
When the INED library arrived it comprised nearly 70,000 documents, including PhD theses, conference papers, and research reports, as well as 1200 periodical titles.
It was decided to integrate the INED material into the “Spaces, Populations, Societies” section, Pole D, on the first floor of the Humathèque—specifically, the section D1, “Demography,” where it is arranged into the following categories (similar to how the original INED library was organized): “statistics, surveys, projections”; “mortality and public health”; “housing, environment, mobility”; and “international migration.” This body of material also fuels the “Authors” corpus.
Rare or precious INED books and documents are kept in the Humathèque’s Special Collections area. They can be consulted on request and under surveillance in the third-floor reading room by way of the online catalogue.
In addition to printed material, the Humathèque also has a substantial number of digital social and human sciences resources. And access to nearly 80 databases, including Sociology Database, Anthropology Online, eHRAF World Cultures, GenderWatch, International Bibliography of the Social Sciences (IBSS), and LGBT Thought and Culture. A considerable number of human and social science journals are also accessible by way of the online catalogue. In 2026 the Humathèque expanded its resources by subscribing to Cairn’s digital “Général SHS [Human and Social Sciences]” journal and book packages as well as OpenEdition’s Freemium program. Altogether this represents nearly 40,000 new books available on line.
INED also deposited 147 sets of archives with Humathèque Condorcet. These are archives collected by INED documentarians from different research services, researchers, and university research departments covering the period 1911-2018—extremely varied material that includes the archives of INED researchers, research teams, surveys, and associations or advocacy groups.
Who can access this material?
The Campus Condorcet Humathèque is open primarily to academic users: researchers, teacher-researchers, doctoral students, and research support service personnel, as well as master’s program students.
However, archives deposited at the Humathèque may also be consulted by the public at large in reading rooms and under surveillance. It can take a considerable amount of time to gain access to some archive material due to the sensitive and time-sensitive information it contains. In exceptional cases, however, the Humathèque may accept requests to access it earlier than officially scheduled.
For information on Humathèque content and services, please see: https://www.campus-condorcet.fr/en.