Découvertes Gallimard
The birth of this collection was based on an idea by Pierre Marchand, then directed by Élisabeth de Farcy. There are 588 volumes plus more than 150 books of spin-offs in this collection, each book focuses on a particular topic, such as history and archaeology, culture and society, art and aesthetics, science and technology, a biography of a famous person, or memories of places, etc. The whole collection covers almost everything of human knowledge. The A6 paper size (125 × 178 mm) is used for these pocket books and printed on thick and glossy coated paper, with a lot of full colour illustrations extracted from heritage resources to decorate the informational texts. Each book has a “Documents” section, more detailed documentary information and historical records are provided here, as well as the sources of all illustrations for those who want to learn further.