Local Library Visit 6: Institut français de Grèce – Médiathèque Octave Merlier (tour held in French) and Hellenic American College Library

Time: 09:00-13:00

Institut français de Grèce – Médiathèque Octave Merlier

Language of tour: French

Type of library: foreign embassy

Postal address: 31, Sina Str., 106 80 Athens, Greece

Distance from Congress venue: 3.0 km

Meeting point: Panepistimio Metro Station

Optimal route: Panepistimio Metro Station, exit Academy of Athens., walk straight ahead, at the corner turn left to Sina Str. and walk up to 31 Sina Str. (Local Library Visit #6a: Institut francais de Grece). Then, the Hellenic American College Library is a few blocks down at 22 Massalias Str. on foot (Local Library Visit #6b).

A volunteer will be waiting for you at the proposed meeting point.

The Octave Merlier Multimedia Library located in the French Institute of Athens is part of the network of French media libraries abroad and is open to the public. It is used for language learning and training, cultural events, meetings and debates and provides documentary resources. It also promotes and gives access to French culture and proposes resources to those who learn French.

The media library has more than 72,000 resources including books, audiobooks, periodicals, comics, movies and CDs as well as special resources for teenage children. It also provides a loan service of digital documents through the Culturethèque online library, a collaborative platform created for the French cultural network. In September 2015, the Octave Merlier Library introduced a special area for video games and the “geek culture”.

 

Hellenic American College Library

Type of library: foreign embassy

Postal address: 22, Massalias Str., 106 80 Athens, Greece

Distance from Congress venue: 3.0 km

 

Located on the 4th floor of the Massalias 22 building, the Library houses over 35,000 titles in English and Greek, an online collection of over 250,000 digital books, subscriptions to major academic periodicals databases numbering 10,000,000 articles and a Rare Books collection. The history of the Library began in the late 1940s with the establishment of the United States Information Service (USIS) American Library in Greece, a gift of the American people to the people of Greece. This Library moved from its premises in Stadiou Street to the facilities of the Hellenic American Union in 1962. In 1997, the Hellenic American Union assumed the public collections of the American Library, which it merged with the material in the Hellenic American Union’s Clary Thompson Library and its collection, Books on Greece. The Library collections were enriched over the years with the establishment of the American Corner (another gift to the Greek people), the purchase of thousands of additional print titles, subscriptions to periodicals databases and the acquisition of 65,000 digital books. In 2011, the Hellenic American Union transferred the entire Library to the Hellenic American College.

The Library and its resources can be used by:

  • Students in the Hellenic American College programs, including the Hellenic American University’s degree programs that are offered at the Hellenic American College via an Agreement of Cooperation;
  • Members of the general public, including students at the Hellenic American Union and students at Greek public universities, upon registering as members of the Library. Registration at the Library is free.
  • Registered members of the Library can use the Library’s digital resources on site at the Library, but only Hellenic American College students can access these resources off-site. Exceptions to this policy are made on a case-by-case basis.

Registered members can also use borrow books from the Library’s lending collections.