History of the centre - Documentation and Archive Centre at Génolhac - The Park

The Association Font-Vive created in 1961 by Dr Jean Pellet of Génolhac, Dr Pierre Richard of Les Vans, Roland Calcat of Les Vans and solicitor Bieau worked towards the creation of the Cévennes Cultural National Park in the 1960s. To this end, it had started to gather works and studies on the Cévennes in the larger sense of the word.

Its dual objective was to safeguard written testimonies concerning the Cévennes and make them available at a single site in the area.

Shortly after its creation, the Cévennes National Park adopted this idea and bought the building previously occupied by the Association Font-Vive at Génolhac, in order to turn it into a “documentation centre for the Mont Lozère Eco-Museum”.

After lying dormant for several years, the project of establishing a documentation and archive centre was officially relaunched on 13 September 1991 in the Maison Font Vive. The Centre opened its doors to the public in 1994, having gathered a sufficiently important collection.

The Centre has slowly grown by acquiring documents and receiving archives, increasing online consultations, bringing out a CD-Rom of bibliographical references, putting its bibliographical lists online, receiving interns, etc.

While the number of consultations in person remains rather modest, the constantly increasing use of the Centre’s Internet site proves the public’s interest in its document collections.