[11141] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
FYI France: "Magazine Litte'raire" on Libraries
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jack Kessler)
Mon Mar 17 20:46:44 1997
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 1997 15:42:52 -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: "Magazine Litte'raire" on Libraries
1) Hello to everyone at the Salon du Livre! In honor of the event, File
5 of the FYI France Online Service -- Book - Dealers in France -- will
continue to be available for free for an additional month, along with
File 1 Print Libraries in France and File 9 Internet Training &
Consulting. Come visit -- http://www.fyifrance.com .
2) "Magazine Litte'raire's" December issue, devoted to "L'Univers des
Bibliothe`ques d'Alexandrie a` Internet", should make fascinating
reading for anyone here.
Among its several excellent features:
* Roger Chartier, historian of the book and of reading par excellence and
chief "scientific advisor" to the Bibliothe`que nationale de France, is
interviewed in depth about the histories of "manuscripts", "collections",
"classification", "catalogs", and "transitions in media". "The great risk
is," Chartier says, "that once a text has attained some sort of electronic
status, its traditional media format will be abandoned... this is the risk
of a loss of memory, a loss of significance, a loss of procedures, a loss
of the very understanding itself of a written culture, for which the
primary textual medium was the printed book." [All quotations which appear
here are translated from the French by JK.]
* Arlette Farge, CNRS researcher and authoer of a recent book on archives,
evokes the different "atmospheres" of different libraries: how the
"Arsenal" differs from the "Ville de Paris" from the "Muse'e de la
Police" -- a matter of "architecture", "collection contents", the attitudes
of librarians and readers...
* Jean Roudaut presents a passionate "evocation" of libraries in all their
different roles, as gathering places, monuments, places of power and
ostentation, and sometimes symbols of daily life as mundane as "green
plants, coffee tables and TVs".
* Jean Favier, historian par excellence and recent President of the
Bibliothe`que nationale de France, is interviewed in depth about that
institution's plans: "on schedule", "open to the public", "well -
organized, along modern rather than its old 19th century lines", "online",
with "online cataloging already containing 13 million records" -- Favier
is a fierce and formidable proponent of the institution which he has been
heading. The BnF head had better be. The BnF is controversial globally as
it is even more in France. It has been expensive. It continues to take
great chances and to run great risks. But it is open and under way, and
this chief has been up to the challenge of defending and promoting it.
* Nathalie Ferrand then presents the dream, "Les bibliothe`ques
virtuelles", an easier task than Favier's at the BnF where digital access
is only one part of the problem. Ferrand's "digital library" excursion
tours through "libraries... which exist merely on computer screens
connected to the Internet", "Frantext and ARTFL", "Electro - chroniques de
Franc,ois Rabelais", "Voltaire e'lectronique", "ABU" and "Project
Gutenberg" and Ted Nelson's "Xanadu". This is ironically an easier world to
imagine now, to denizens of the "digital age", than the messier and much
more difficult 10+ million decaying printed volumes which the BnF -- also
enamored of the new digital technologies -- must pack and move and somehow
preserve and make accessible.
* Olivier Corpet then is interviewed about his fascinating "Institut
Me'moires de l'Edition Contemporaine / IMEC" project, to assemble and make
accessible the vast archives of French commercial publishing firms: names
such as Flammarion, Hachette, Larousse -- over 150 of them, to date -- and
including journal archives ("Esprit", "Revue des Deux Mondes", etc.), and
authors' papers (Althusser, Barthes, Beckett, Camus, Duras, Paulhan, etc.,
etc.).
* Jean - Christophe Abramovici then writes on as interesting a topic: the
history, and only recent disappearance, of the "Enfers" in French
libraries to which books thought objectionable for taste but also other
reasons traditionally have been consigned -- hoards of historical
information now being mined by many historians and writers.
* Michel Delon describes the burning of books: the cultural symbol which
has evolved from the historical myths of the burning of the Great Library
of Alexandria to the recent cruel realities of the bombing of Sarajevo's
library. A dramatic photograph of the Sarajevo Library ruins offers
evidence that the cultural philistinism of the end of the first half of
this century still is very much alive now at the end of its second.
* Claude Leroy presents an "inventory" of the ways in which books and the
ideas which they contain can in fact completely disappear. Among the more
recent "Phantom Books" which he describes, evoking Eco's warning of the
burining of the Aedificium in "The Name of the Rose", are Dante's sonnets
for Angelieri, Bu:chner's "L'Are'tin", Dostoevsky's first version of "The
Idiot", Aragon's and Breton's "Troisie`me Faust"...
* Ge'rard de Cortanze then suggests the ideas of "library" which have been
formulated by its most assiduous users, authors: from Agatha Christie's
"The Body in the Library" to Charlie Bukowski to Sartre and Cannetti,
Vale'ry and Cervantes, and of course Borges, writers have included their
place of sometime ecstasy and much labor and despair in the very works
which they research and often write there.
* Eco, finally, is brought inevitably into the discussion, here by
Alexandre Laumonier. Laumonier is taken -- perhaps more than Eco himself is
-- with the parallel between medievalist semiotics and the Italian writer's
fascination with libraries. "The Name of the Rose", says Laumonier, "is the
work of a semiologist who was formed, at least in part, by structuralism...
it is thought about signs, apparently in play but in reality serious, which
interests Eco..." Signs perhaps, but also medieval theology and manuscript
preparation and human motivations and medicinal herbs and a good mystery
and even a little sex: Eco is a complicated person -- "The Name of the
Rose" is not a simple book.
Whether Umberto Eco has as straightforward a "message for libraries" as
Laumonier believes him to have is questionable: "a library is nothing more
than a great book formed by other books" -- but the words are Laumonier's,
not Eco's -- Eco's "library certainly is unrealistic for the Middle Ages,
the descriptions which we are given make us think more of Lovecraft or
Borges than of medieval historical documents...". But as a description of
the medieval mind -- and certainly of the late medieval theological mind
-- Eco's Aedificium "library" imagery perhaps is without peer. (Eco's
closest direct assault -- published -- on "library definition" advocates,
"above all, no toilets".) Still, we owe to Laumonier, whatever are the
complexities of describing Umberto Eco, his having brought the Italian
savant into the discussion.
* "Magazine Litte'raire" also has been careful to include a fascinating
array of illustrated sidebars: "La Bodleian Library", "La Bibliothe`que
Apostolique du Vatican", "La London Library", "La Bibliothe`que de
l'Arsenal", "La Bibliothe`que Ducal" [Wolfenbu:ttel], "La Bibliothe`que
Laurentienne", "La Bibliothe`que de l'Escurial", "La Bibliothe`que
National de Russie", "La Newberry Library", "Trinity College Library", "La
Bibliothe`que du Congre`s", "La BPI de Beaubourg", "La British Library".
* There also are the short book reviews which are the magazine's raison
d'e^tre, these on subjects of much interest to readers attracted to the
above articles: "Le Pouvoir des bibliothe`ques" by Marc Baratin and
Christian Jacob, "Le Livre interdit, de The'ophile de Viau a` Sade" by
Abramovici who contributed the article on the "Enfers", "Tre'sors de la
Bibliothe`que nationale de France" by Marie - He'le`ne Tesnie`re [see FYI
France for Jan 15, 1996], and the new and magisterial "Nouvelles
Alexandries. Les Grands Chantiers de bibliothe`ques dans le monde" by
Michel Melot.
"Magazine Litte'raire", No. 349 December 1996, 30 F on the newstands in
France, $8.25 in San Francisco. Not inexpensive, but well worth it this
time. So little time, so many books -- and magazines...
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
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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.
XXX
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