The National Library of France is one of the top ten presidential projects in the Mitterrand era. He announced the plan of "building the largest and most modern library in the world" on July 14, 1988, the French National Day. This project is called a cross-century project. The design of this project was selected through large-scale international design bidding, and the design scheme presided over by dominique perrault, a 35-year-old young French architect, won the bid in one fell swoop. However, the project has been criticized and accused by all parties. The engineering design has also been revised and adjusted repeatedly, and it has faced several pauses. However, Mitterrand resisted the pressure from all sides and always enthusiastically supported the project. Until the completion of the project, President Mitterrand personally cut the ribbon for the completion of the project, dragging his seriously ill body, which fully reflected Mitterrand's hard work in this project, so President Chirac named the library Mitterrand National Library.

Some people accuse Mitterrand of ignoring the French economic reality and spending huge sums of money to build such a super library, which will accelerate the French economic crisis; Others ask whether it is necessary to build a library giant in the era of informationization, digitalization and networking. Others question and complain about the conceptual design of the library itself and whether the steel-glass structure is suitable for the protection conditions of books: "The appearance of this huge steel-glass monster will destroy the harmony of the architectural groups in Paris."

Lancaster, a famous American library scientist, once predicted: "With the application of modern information technology and the popularization of electronic publications and machine-readable documents, traditional libraries will complete their mission and die." Universal Library in the 1990s seems to be caught in the embarrassment of the times: on the one hand, libraries are calling for the arrival of the "information age"; On the other hand, it needs to strive to maintain its position. This is indeed a bittersweet period for the library. It is no longer news that local public libraries have declined or even closed down due to lack of funds, while some university library departments have either changed their names or closed down. Including the world-famous Library College of Columbia University, had to recruit new students because of the exhaustion of students. 1993, the earthquake in California destroyed many buildings in a branch of the University of California. Other buildings were later repaired, but the library building was not rebuilt. 1994, the central library in a certain area of Britain was destroyed by a fire. The library has not been rebuilt, but has become a network node connecting 14 servers. Perhaps it is based on the fact that. 1On August 20th, 995, Los Angeles Times published an article, which listed librarians in public libraries as "occupations that are about to disappear".

In this context, after years of discussions, ideological and political debates and architectural debates, opinions on the construction of the French National Library gradually tend to be unified. Universal Library's giant finally stood up. It was officially opened to the outside world in 1997, which is undoubtedly a great encouragement to Universal Library society. The revised scheme realizes the unification of book protection and restoration technology and advanced information processing technology, the unification of existing memory and various forms of information dissemination, and the unification of printed audio-visual information, multimedia documents and digital documents. The completion of the French Mitterrand National Library sent a solemn signal to Universal Library: the information age is not the end of the library, but a new era of library development. As a library that preserves human cultural heritage, it will not die out in the future, but a new type of virtual library will be born on the basis of the traditional library, which will be the sublimation of the traditional library. It can be said that the appearance of this French super library has played a positive role in revitalizing the cause of Universal Library.