Founded in 1969, the CCI at the Pompidou Centre in Paris is devoted to the study of design, broadly defined as ranging ‘from town to teaspoon’, and within both an international and a cultural context. It hosts and organises exhibitions, conferences, and seminars, and produces publications; its documentation service supports the CCI’s own staff and activities, in addition to offering a service to external users. The collections include over 15,000 books, many journals, and files of press cuttings. From its inception the CCI has used a computer system to organise and provide access to its documentation; previously available online via Questel under the name CéCIle, the database is now known as CCIDOC and can only be searched on site. It comprises some 42,000 bibliographic citations, plus a directory of French designers; up to 4,000 new references are added each year. Access to CCIDOC records is provided via both an indexing language controlled by a thesaurus, and keywords (representing subjects, proper names, dates, and places) taken from the natural language of titles and abstracts. Related terms from both controlled and natural languages are brought together in a lexicon which indicates the frequency of use of particular terms. Searches can also be limited or made specific by means of identifiers, all of which can be combined using Boolean operators.