The consultation centre is presently situated at the Association headquarters in Le Havre :
| Avenue Lucien Corbeaux | ||
| 76600 Le Havre | ||
| Phone 02 35 24 19 13 | ||
| Fax 02 35 25 19 37 |
The centre is open to researchers, either
amateur or professional, subject to an appointment and the acceptation of this
appointment.
The researchers have to conform to
consultation and communication regulations.
Subscription to the French Lines Association or the payment of consultation right are the sine qua non conditions of access to documents. For members of the French Lines Association, access is free of charge. For non members there are two possibilities :

The French Lines
Association can respond to certain types of request which should be addressed
by post to Le Havre. This might
be used for example for genealogical research, questions on trips,
personalities, shipping lines or vessels.
Prices have been set for postal requests
:
| Research time | Members | Non-members |
| Less than 30 minutes | 3,81 euros | 7,62 euros |
| Less than 1 hour | 7,62 euros | 15,24 euros |
Direct exploitation (example: use of film clippings) or indirect (example: publication of a book written with the help of archives...) of the Association collections is subject to prior agreement and the acquittal of rights. For all information, contact French Lines :
Clémence Ducroix on 02 35 24 19 13
The French Lines
Association is a private organisation and thus should be distinguished from
public archive services whose costs are paid for by the State budget or local
authorities.
In order to make the paper collection
available to the public, the Association employs two archivists who have been
working on the archiving of the collections, their reconditioning and the
installation of research tools.
The availability of these paper collections
to the general public calls for a great deal of analysis and classification.
This creates working costs such as the staffs salaries, upkeep of the
premises, purchase of archive boxes and various other supplies, etc
It
also requires an investment particularly in information technology in order to
optimize the research conditions.
In addition, the communication of documents
at a distance or on our premises is a time-consuming task. For on the spot
consultations, the archivist receives the researcher, analyses his needs,
informs him about the methods of classification, guides him in his research and
makes available the documents required. To deal with requests made by post, the
archivist interrogates the databases, consults the documents and finds the
required information.
It is for these reasons that the French
Lines Association ask the researchers to participate financially in order to
help protect the maritime heritage.
French Lines is a
non-profit making association created under the 1901 law. Consequently, the
associations profits are immediately reinvested in the protection and
promotion of French maritime heritage.
The protection of the heritage means, for
example, restoring archives that have been damaged through the years or by poor
storing conditions. It also means gathering new collections coming from other
partners from the maritime world in order to enlarge the field of study.
Promotion of the
heritage means putting information and research within reach of the general
public through up-to-date technologies : the scanning of images, creation of
CD-Roms and web site for the consultation of documents from a distance.