Henri Gaidoz Collection

Henri Gaidoz's Original Cataloging Boxes

The Henri Gaidoz collection consists of 6,785 items collected and organized by Henri Gaidoz. Most are previously published works (pamphlets, booklets, offprints, and extracts from journals), while a few (notes, correspondence) are unpublished Most of the collection dates from the mid 19th to early 20th centuries, but a few (24 items in all) date from the 16th to 18th centuries.

Indiana University Libraries purchased this collection from Librairie M. Slatkine & Fils (Geneva) in 1973. Slatkine & Fils had acquired it from a Mr. Gerchel who died in Paris in 1970. 140 publications in the collection are dated between 1933-1968, which was after Gaidoz’ death; these were presumably added by Gerchel or previous owners.

Subjects in the collection span the breadth of Gaidoz’ wide-ranging interests in folklore, mythology, Celtic studies, and comparative religion. The bulk of the collection is in French but works in English, German, Italian, Late Latin, and other languages also appear.

The collection is organized according to the subject classifications devised by Gaidoz. He filed materials in pamphlet boxes by subject, and we preserved that system while replacing the original boxes with archival-quality enclosures. Gaidoz’ classification scheme divided items into 206 boxes from Box 1 (“Folklore of the Human Body”) to Box 206 (“Education—History”). A few subjects were represented by more than one box.

In addition to the archival originals, Indiana University Libraries own a version on microfiche that was produced by ProQuest in 2007: Indiana University Libraries' Henri Gaidoz collection. Units 1-5. The microfiche collection is divided into 5 units but retains the original classification scheme with some slight variations in the naming of subjects, e.g. "Folklore of Food" instead of "Food".