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Mapping Expatriate Paris: The Sylvia Beach Lending Library Project

Mapping Expatriate Paris: The Sylvia Beach Lending Library Project is a digital humanities project that aims to transform the lending library subscription records housed in the Sylvia Beach Papers (C0108) into a searchable database and set of online, interactive maps. Users will be able track the changing demographics and geography of expatriate Paris, as well as the circulation of individual books. What did the Lost Generation read? What percentage of the bookstore’s patrons were writers and artists? How did expatriate Paris change over time—from the roaring twenties to the Great Depression? The project promises to answer these questions as it offers additional insights into the development of global modernism, the culture of interwar Paris, and the sociology of literary communities. The project aims to publish an initial phase of its findings in early in 2017.