Les archives de la direction chargée des constructions scolaires au ministère de l’Éducation nationale (1956-1986) : de la production à la conservation

Abstract

From September 1956 until its dissolution in January 1986, the “direction de l’équipement scolaire, universitaire et sportif”, the “Directorate for School, University and Sports Facilities” (DESUS) in the Education Department, renamed in 1975 as “direction des équipements et des constructions”, “Directorate of Facilities and Buildings” (DEC), was in charge of construction works for school and university buildings in France and centralised the related files. Its archival collection is now kept in the “Archives nationales de France”, French National Archives and consists of nearly one linear kilometre. It’s a fair reflection of the Directorate’s organisation, the evolution of its responsibilities, the administrative and financial procedures implemented to manage the works for schools, in particular high schools. The procedures for collecting archives and the archivists’ actions also explain how the collection stands today and why its exploitation is rather difficult. This article aims to give some keys to access this complicated material and find the high school buildings records, even when they don’t particularly stand out in it.

Keywords

• archives
• French National Archives
• public archives
• archival collecting
• classification
• archival sources