[10829] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
FYI France:_Internet Digital Libraries_ France ch.p1/4
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jack Kessler)
Mon Nov 18 21:29:13 1996
Date: Mon, 18 Nov 1996 12:35:40 -0600 (CST)
From: Jack Kessler <kessler@well.com>
To: Multiple recipients of list PACS-L <PACS-L@UHUPVM1.UH.EDU>
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L@UHUPVM1.UH.EDU>
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
FYI France: _Internet Digital Libraries_, "France" chapter, pt.1/4
This issue of FYI France presents two items:
1) FYI France Online Service -- http://www.fyifrance.com -- New Rapid -
Access indexpage now in place!; and,
2) _Internet Digital Libraries : The International Dimension_ book excerpt
-- its chapter on "France", part 1/4.
XXX
1) FYI France Online Service: Rapid Access indexpage
The FYI France Online Service, at http://www.fyifrance , now has a newly -
designed "Rapid Access" indexpage, for those of you who love the images
but do not love their response time. You now reach the Rapid Access
indexpage first. From there you can go on to the prettier homepage, or
direct to the 12 content pages. Please try it out and let me know what you
think: access still is free of charge until the end of this year.
2) _Internet Digital Libraries_ excerpt.
This month's FYI France issue excerpts the chapter on France from my
forthcoming book, _Internet Digital Libraries: the International
Dimension_ (Boston and London : Artech House, Dec 1996).
The purpose of the book is to present an international assortment of
current "digital library" projects, to investigate what the "library" part
in the often - heard "Digital Library" label really means. The excerpt
here has been edited heavily for this email version. This also is an early
version, from before my able editors got to work on it. The full outline
of the book appears at the end of Part 2 of this issue. For now, here is
what it says about France and the French:
Chapter 4: France -- Flexible Centralization -- 137,217 Internet hosts
as of January, 1966: 1 Internet host per 422 French people (per Network
Wizards, http://www.nw.com, and CIA World FactBook 1995,
http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/95fact/index.html).
[189,786 Internet hosts in France as of July, 1996: a 38% increase in 6
months! JK]
The idea of "library" in France has a long and special history. The
French record with their "bibliothe`ques" not only is political but is
inter - related, intimately, with the historical development of the
French monarchy and the political viability of the French state [1].
Some of the oldest and still often - repeated stories of the French
Bibliothe`que Nationale concern an invasion of France by the English,
and the seizure and dispersal of the collected books by the invaders.
Modern French book collections trace their existence, in most cases, to
political upheaval: to Viking invasions and the flight of manuscripts
from one monastic armarius / book - chest to another, to threatened and
real burning at the hands of some faction during the Wars of Religion,
or to "liberations" of "First" and "Second" Estate collections by the
"Third" during the Revolution.
This political history -- one might say political and national and
generally governance - oriented history -- still is very much in mind
among the modern French. Regional collections jealously guard their
independence of Paris, remembering the political dangers in the capital
which their collections were spared by having been sequestered in the
provinces during the Revolution.
In Paris itself, decisions which might never be made in the provinces
are made and executed with alacrity: Parisians are moving one of the
world's largest libraries across the city in 1996, the result of a
policy being executed only eight years after it was first suggested:
such speed on such a major project rarely is found in other national
capitals elsewhere in the world, much less in a French provincial
government center.
As with book libraries, so with online services and other things in
France: one always must be aware of an active political component -- of
the active involvement of government and the governors, in fact, and not
just of the usual political process. In France, moreover -- not a small
country -- the central government exerts a strong and direct control.
An online bulletin board service physically located on a mountain - top
in Haute - Savoie has much to be concerned about in the government
debate and policy - making in Paris. That such central government
policies have been flexible, enough to permit and in fact to promote
much of the Digital Libraries activity described in what follows, does
not suggest that French developments in this area have been any less
centrally - controlled, or any less political.
* The Bibliothe`que Publique d'Information / BPI -- general - purpose,
central city, general public access Digital Libraries
The Bibliothe`que Publique d'Information -- at the Centre Georges
Pompidou in the center of Paris -- was founded in 1977, with a mandate
to expand French library services in a non - traditional way. Its
architecture alone was revolutionary. But even more revolutionary were
its open access, overt appeal to the general public, and commitment from
its beginnings to non - traditional information media.
The BPI went online early, on the Minitel, at 3615BPI and on the
Internet, at telnet://terminus.bpi.fr:2300 . Today it has an established
online presence, linking its numerous services, on W3: at
http://www.bpi.fr .
The first thing which any user notices, on connecting to the
Bibliothe`que Publique d'Information / BPI via its service on W3, is the
inline image of the enormous, hi - tech - barn - like, very un - library
- like interior of this now very popular Paris library.
The second thing which a foreign user notices, however, is that an
"English version" of the BPI's online access is available, the link for
this tucked in immediately after the initial image. An American
particularly notices this: one doesn't find "French" or really any non -
American - English abilities appearing on American libraries' online
services at all, much less as an initial feature.
A first thought is that France, known so well for its jingoistic
approach to language, seems to be an unlikely candidate for such
linguistic flexibility, and yet there the link is, and choosing it leads
to a very good rendering of the main library entry point, thus
accessible to foreign English language users.
A third thing noticeable initially, about the BPI online W3 service, is
the variety of resources which it offers, all in addition to that which
an online user normally seeks in consulting a library. A traditional
library contains printed books and their bibliographic records: the
initial entry point for most users is the catalog of these records.
Yet the BPI features many other resources on its opening online screens.
There is a general description of the BPI itself: how many library users
have read books in a library for years without knowing much about the
library itself? There are announcements, a calendar of events, lists of
other libraries in France and elsewhere -- with live links to them --
BPI publications lists, and an online images database.
Most of these resources and announcements have been presented by printed
book libraries in the past, but in a service ancillary to their basic
occupation of providing the books. These extra services were things
posted on thumbtack - filled bulletin boards, at which users at best
glanced as they waited for their books.
One wonders whether with increased online usage the tables might be
turned, and the "community bulletin board" library function will become
more of a primary Digital Libraries activity, taking precedence over an
increasingly - ancillary function of providing access to the old printed
book collection?
The BPI online library catalog, finally, also is available: the
bibliographic records of the printed books and other documents in the
collection. For this, by contrast to the BPI W3 page, a foreign user
notices initially a _lack_ of non - French access. The screens obtained
via the telnet link for the catalog do not resemble the screens obtained
on the W3 service, or on other telnet - available library catalogs.
There is a similar library - logic to the command structure which a user
must follow to find an item: a familiar - sounding "TIT / title", "AUT /
author", "A-T / author - title", etc., typology to follow. But it is
clear that the exact procedures, and the format of the bibliographic
records thereby obtained, are unique: perhaps to France, perhaps to this
BPI institution alone.
So, by contrast to the immense standardization of its initial W3 access
-- so much of the WorldWideWeb appears to a user still to be standard,
if only because of the continuing domination of the single Mosaic /
Netscape browser -- the BPI catalog access, with its specialised
vocabulary, command structure, and interface, appears positively
eccentric to a foreign user.
* INIST / the Institut National de l'Information Scientifique et
Technique -- PASCAL / FRANCIS -- the stand - alone database
Like the science establishments in other countries, the French
scientific community was an early user of online digital information.
Researchers attached to the giant Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique / CNRS have had access to most digital technology as it has
developed and evolved, in France and elsewhere.
Traditional library functions have been among those developed in French
scientific online digital information. The Institut National de
l'Information Scientifique et Technique / INIST was established in 1988
-- building upon a precursor which had been established in 1970 -- to
coordinate these French science information activities.
An initial view of the INIST W3 service shows the immense range of
digital information and services which it provides online: descriptions
of pan - European cooperative research projects in the sciences, thesis
and general grey literature bibliography and publication, documentation
collections (periodicals, scientific reports, conference proceedings),
document delivery and translation and research services, newsletters and
online conferencing.
Among the various INIST projects has been the digitization of the large
citation and abstract service provided since the second World War by the
printed series "Bulletin Signale'tique", re - christened for its digital
and online incarnation as PASCAL (sciences) and FRANCIS (humanities):
these contain a combined total of over 13 million citations, with multi
- lingual searching and abstracts.
via W3 to http://www.inist.fr
* Bibliothe`que municipale de Lyon -- a "local" French state library
effort
Other early leaders in the provision of Digital Libraries information in
France have come from the ranks of the "bibliothe`ques municipales".
This term, often mis - translated as "public library" in the US, in fact
refers to very large research institutions and collections, located in
most of the nation's major cities, which house some of the oldest and
rarest books in the country, items which most certainly are _not_
provided in open access to the general public: a French bibliothe`que
municipale is more like the New York Public Library than it is similar
to normal public libraries in US cities.
French bibliothe`ques municipales, moreover, benefit from national and
international prestige, and French central government participation and
direct financial support, which public libraries elsewhere lack. From
its beginning in France, the Digital Libraries effort has seen the
involvement of numerous bibliothe`ques municipales. That of Lyon, for
example.
As with other online Digital Libraries offerings, that of the
Bibliothe`que municipale de Lyon strikes the user first with an image
devoted to its monumental architecture. Unlike national efforts, in the
French capital, the BM Lyon seems less - concerned with non - French -
language access, and does not show the English - language option which,
for example, the BPI does.
The BM Lyon is just as concerned as is the BPI, however, to show users
all the non - printed book resources which it has to offer: links to
Lyon's remarkable Muse'e de l'Imprimerie et de la Banque, and to various
online databases and fulltext publishing experiments, as well as to
community announcements and detailed online exhibits of the library's
varied special collections, rare books -- the BM Lyon's oldest book was
given to a predecessor collection by Charlemagne -- new acquisitions and
exhibitions, and modern and ancient documents of Lyon and its region.
The BM Lyon online catalog, however -- like that of the BPI, also online
via Minitel and telnet -- suffers from the same standardization
drawbacks which confront the BPI online catalog, however. As with the
BPI online catalog, the foreign user confronts a seemingly - familiar
command structure which, however, retrieves records markedly unlike
those found in similar online catalog efforts in Asia and the Americas
and even in the rest of Europe.
From the great standardization of Mosaic / Netscape pointing - and -
clicking, the BM Lyon Digital Libraries effort proceeds to a highly non
- standard basic cataloging resource: non - standard, that is, to any
user not familiar with Lyon or with basic French online cataloging
technique -- which describes most of the potential BM Lyon Digital
Libraries users on the Internet.
via W3 to http://www.bm-lyon.fr , Minitel to 3615BMLYON , catalog via
telnet to telnet://134.214.24.3 .
(A full list of other French bibliothe`ques municipales which may be
found online appears in the book's appendix.)
In Part 2: FRANTEXT / ARTFL , the IRCAM / Institut de Recherche et
Coordination Acoustique - Musique, Minitel, the Ministry of Culture's
work, and the BIBLIO-FR econference.
XXX
FYI France (sm)(tm) e - newsletter ISSN 1071 - 5916
*
| FYI France (sm)(tm) is a monthly electronic newsletter,
| published since 1992 as a small - scale, personal,
| experiment, in the creation of large - scale
| "information overload", by Jack Kessler. Any material
/ \ written by me which appears in FYI France may be
----- copied and used by anyone for any good purpose, so
// \\ long as, a) they give me credit and show my e - mail
--------- address and, b) it isn't going to make them money: if
// \\ if it is going to make them money, they must get my
permission in advance, and share some of the money
which they get with me. Use of material written by others requires their
permission. FYI France archives are at http://infolib.berkeley.edu
(search for FYIFrance), or via gopher to infolib.berkeley.edu 72
(path: 3. Electronic Journals (Library-Oriented)/ 6. FYIFrance/ , or
http://www.univ-rennes1.fr/LISTES/biblio-fr@univ-rennes1.fr/ (BIBLIO-FR
econference archive), or via telnet to a.cni.org , login brsuser
(PACS / PACS-L econference archive), or at http://www.fyifrance.com .
Suggestions, reactions, criticisms, praise, and poison - pen letters
all will be gratefully received at kessler@well.sf.ca.us .
Copyright 1992- by Jack Kessler, all rights reserved.
