[12072] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
"Digital Libraries" in France -- BMLyon "Enluminures"
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jack Kessler)
Mon Mar 16 20:21:22 1998
Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1998 17:23:02 -0600
From: Jack Kessler <kessler@well.com>
To: PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU>
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
"Digital Libraries" in France -- the BMLyon's "Enluminures"
* Announcement: in case anyone thinks librarians have no courage --
On March 23 at the Salon du Livre in Paris three librarians and an author
will be discussing "Libraries, the Extreme Right, and the Violence of
Words". What makes this courageous is that today, March 15, France goes
to the polls in a "regionals" election which currently is predicted to
show over 15% of the nation's voters in favor of the extremist Front
National. How many of the rest of us would stand up to be heard in such an
open public session, in such a volatile situation and immediately after an
election which is proving to be highly emotional and might at worst be
catastrophic? Bon courage aux bibliothe'caires. Details of the talk below.
--oOo--
* The BM Lyon's "Enluminures"
The French have assembled a remarkable new "digital library" in Lyon.
There the bibliothe`que municipale has mounted "Enluminures", an online
presentation of 3000 images -- so far, eventually to be 10,000 -- from the
library's famous collections of illuminated manuscripts and incunabula:
5th century to the Renaissance --
http://www.bm-lyon.fr/ (select "Services en ligne" & scroll down)
Along with the Bibliothe`que Nationale de France's "Gallica", reviewed
here in the January issue, the BM Lyon's "Enluminures" must rank now as
one of the best online "digital libraries" thus far assembled.
Before I describe "Enluminures", though, it might be useful to define
"best". "Digital library" is a much - abused term, nowadays -- the only
definition which I have found so far which covers all candidates is,
things digital which call themselves library, &
things library which call themselves digital
-- some greater precision in terms generally is needed.
I will try 8 criteria here: for what makes a digital library "good" --
1) content 5) metadata
2) organization 6) multilingual
3) size 7) "interactive"
4) updates 8) standards
so, as applied to the BM Lyon's "Enluminures":
1) content. Is the information provided actually interesting and useful to
users?
-- not the system, not the design, not the cute little waving Java figures
or the scrolling banners, but the "substance" which regular users
ultimately obtain?
By this criterion, "Enluminures" succeeds magnificently. Even if you are
not particularly interested in early books and manuscripts, the images
which you can obtain here are beautiful and the texts fascinating, so much
so that they themselves might spark your interest in their subjects --
what more could "good" content provide?
The images currently loaded are taken from 58 works in the collection,
including "Psautier latin, VIe sie`cle", "Pentateuque, VIe sie`cle",
"Boe'ce, De Consolatione philosophiae, XVe sie`cle", "Ysopet, XIIIe
sie`cle", "Gautier de Metz, Image du monde, XIIIe sie`cle", "Te'rence,
Come'dies, XVe sie`cle", and so on.
Accompanying text is minimal, so far: just the short descriptions as shown
above. One must hope -- one must imagine -- that the BM Lyon eventually
will add textual commentary, which would greatly enhance this already -
excellent "content": there is so much which librarians, conservators,
historians of the book and of the subjects treated, and users themselves
-- let's make this medium "interactive"! (see below) -- might say or
already have said on these subjects, which could be included or at least
added in via a link.
2) organization. Can a user find things?
A pet peeve which I long have cherished against Ted Nelson and the
inventors of "hypertext" has been that I myself do not think that way:
"leaps" are fun for those who can make them, but there is no single best
way of human thinking. The Internet, particularly its "hypertextual" Web,
is overpopulated at the moment with sites which assume that their
particular way of finding things is the only way. Good organization, with
multiple paths, is the key to "access".
"Enluminures" has put a great deal of effort into organizing its "content"
for presentation. Things -- images, text -- are not just "thrown up" here,
as they are so often elsewhere online. Their formal system is called "SGBI
/ Syste`me de gestion de banques d'images", developed by the "Maison de
l'Orient a` Lyon", a unit of the CNRS and the Universite' Lyon 2. The site
contains an index page which for now lists only "Enluminures", but which
provides ample additional room for other listings, hopefully indicating
that "SGBI" is to be expanded.
A "linear" browse passes through 5 levels of "frames" screens: home,
"entity" selection screen, thumbnail images selection screen, a detail
screen showing text about the thumbnail selected, and a final full image.
This works well. More description detail is needed for the "entities",
though -- "Bible latine, XIIIe sie`cle" does not tell a user much, and
there are five of them listed just so, even now -- but presumably more
detail will be forthcoming sometime. The thumbnails are enticing, as
thumbnails should be: small enough to load quickly, large enough to see
something interesting. Five levels of organization are not too much to
handle: there are few horizontal links yet -- another feature which
hopefully will be added as things progress.
Multi-criteria searching appears to be available: a second "path",
alternative to the "linear" method of just plunging through the levels.
Search indexes currently are "creator, entity name, image name, image
creation date, image modification date, caption, illustrator, descriptors,
dimensions, placement, title, authors, 'date'". Scholars will want
standardization of these, and more access points and better definitions,
but already "Enluminures" offers more possibilities than most "digital
library" search engines provide for images. (I cannot seem to make the
searching work yet myself, though: my efforts to enter "Bible" and "Pline"
and "Saint Augustin" in the single data entry field so far yield only the
dreaded "document contains no data" popup -- "Aucune r%oponse" toujours
-- en travaux, perhaps?)
3) size. Can the user's systems handle the sizes involved?
One of the Internet's greatest problems in "scaling up" is
incompatibilities among hardware, software, systems, routers and
connections and users, in dealing with ever - changing "sizes", of files,
transmission speeds, hard disks, floppies, image resolutions, etc., etc.
The Internet grows like a teenager: just as soon as you think you've got
the shoe size figured out, the shirts no longer fit.
There is no indication of the size of images in "Enluminures". This would
be helpful to users. Knowing that one page might take a few seconds to
download while another may take many minutes is crucial to planning online
research strategies -- also to avoiding user frustration and ultimate
abandonment.
At 56k flex, however, and dialing in on a busy Friday over a particularly
- busy trans - Atlantic connection, none of the "Enluminures" pages --
even the fullsize images -- seem particularly hard to reach. Someone has
done well at the BM Lyon on the very necessary and often neglected
judgments balancing page and image "size versus quality".
4) updates. How current are both the information and the system?
The age of digital information is the age of ephemera: digitization puts
information into a medium where it can be too - easily changed --
alteration of a few bits or bytes, even simply to "improve", puts versions
"out of synch", creates "variants". It is as though the world wants to
suffer through the growing pains of the post - Gutenberg "age of
incunabula" all over again, reinventing that wheel. Change must occur, but
it ought to be tracked very carefully.
For each of its images, "Enluminures" provides "creator", "date created",
"date modified". This will be immeasurably useful to users who, as the
BM Lyon improves its service, will discover that the image which they
downloaded months ago suddenly somehow has changed in its online version.
Certainly textual changes, but also images: better resolution, more
effective photography or scanning, any difference whatsoever -- all can be
announced to users very simply via an "update date" shown on the page.
The same goes for updates to the online system. The Babel of standards and
versions and "browser wars" and HTML anomalies and "server - side
improvements" gets worse and worse for users, even as it improves digital
information as an industry: to the user, yesterday's technique, approach,
IP address, Unix "path" location, browser - or - other - software - and -
version, always is suspect -- it may not work today, and it probably will
not work tomorrow, at least because somebody will have "improved" it. It
is incumbent on providers to let users know about this. For "Enluminures",
for example, their excellent "SGBI" system undoubtedly will change: for
the users, it will be best if the system is labeled online with a version
number, and if caveats are posted regarding any anomalies which its
developers may discover while testing it online (see below).
5) metadata. Can users find it from other systems?
I do not see any metadata in the HTML of the several "Enluminures" pages
which I have examined for this, but then there is not much metadata in use
on the Web generally anywhere, yet. This will have to change. The "choose
- your - own - superlative" growth of the Internet guarantees that search
and retrieval which tries to index all the contents of all the pages of
every site cannot / will not keep up with "information overload". And that
is just for text. Systems for classifying images still are being
developed. To locate everything users will need metadata -- "Dublin Core"
or whatever -- and libraries, which appreciate the need for "indexing" and
"access points" better than anyone, should be in the forefront of the
effort. Metadata hopefully will be a future addition to "Enluminures", as
it should be to any other "digital library".
6) multilingual. Can users understand what they find?
Library schools long taught that "access" is a complex term: "you can lead
a horse to water but you can't make it drink", "do you have any books
about horses?" -- these and other librarianship "old saws" should have
made their impact on digital information systems and interface design. But
they haven't. The Internet still, for example, is largely monolingual:
American English, that is, and colloquial American English at that.
France is a leader in the "non - Anglo - Saxon" world in getting away from
the "American English" model, and proudly so. Sometimes they never let you
forget it. Just so, multi - lingual "Enluminures" has been made available
in English in addition to its original French: some day hopefully the BM
Lyon will add German, and Spanish, and Italian, and Chinese, and other
languages as well. Merely the addition of _one_ extra language puts this
French online "digital library" well ahead of most on the Web in providing
"user access". Salesmen say that "you have to speak the language of the
customer"...
7) "interactive". Are users being offered something new, or just "old wine
in a new bottle"?
The greatest complaint heard among serious digital information critics is
that old technologies simply are pouring their contents into the new
technologies blindly, without availing themselves of the advantages of the
new. For the most part this doesn't work. In the US, print newspapers
which simply have dumped text into Websites have gone largely ignored -- a
few now are failing, spectacularly. Users do not like "being had", and
they feel this when they are subjected to something which is nothing
better than clumsy re - packaging. The precise advantages of the new
technology have to be considered carefully in an application, and then
fully - used.
XeroxParc, the Media Lab, INRIA and other "think - tanks" have formulated
various lists of the essential advantages of the digital innovation. Among
these have been simply the presence online of images in addition to text:
"Enluminures" is a sterling example of this. Another "Internet advantage"
is links -- the ability to "hop around", "hyperactively", both within the
site and outside to other resources: "Enluminures" offers some hypertext
linking internally, although very little externally yet -- hopefully more
is coming.
Yet another general "Internet advantage", then, is "interactivity", the
possibility of "give and take" among users and authors and other
participants in the medium: email messaging, "chat", econferencing, online
interviews, "bulletin boards" -- the entire panoply of digital techniques
signified by the information engineer's hoary old term "feedback".
Users and teachers love "interactivity": it is what makes users become
involved with the thing which they are using -- it is why libraries, on
both sides of the Atlantic, which never have succeeded before in enticing
teenagers into their reading rooms, suddenly are besieged by youthful
"Internauts" hogging the public Web stations. There is a range of
"Internet advantages" which still too often is ignored at Web sites:
"interactivity" is a leading one, which "Enluminures" and other "digital
libraries" hopefully will provide as they develop.
8) standards. Can users transfer current skills to this system?
The "user's credo" might as well be that of the average automobile driver:
"I don't want to / have time to learn how this thing works, I just want to
drive it". Users are "un - interested" in learning new technique: they
want the end - product, the information -- the easiest thing for them is
to transfer existing skills.
Standards are the key to the transferability of skills: if and to the
extent that the Internet industry can agree upon certain standards, users
will be able to rely upon their own single set of standard skills rather
than having to go out and become electrical engineers every time they have
to press an unfamiliar button.
Unfortunately, "Enluminures" offers an example of this need for standards
which not only is fundamental to the Internet's success but happens to be
making world business headlines at the moment. The main "search" page for
"Enluminures" does not come up at all in my brand - new "Internet Explorer
4.0 -- version 4.72.2106.8 -- 128 bit enabled", even though my older
"Netscape Communicator 4.03" has no trouble in reading it.
I _think_ it's a "frames" problem, having to do with HTML coding standards
for same, and I have suggested this to Lyon. Trouble is, as a mere "user"
I don't really know, don't really care, and most importantly don't really
have time to find out what the source of this problem is: I am "the un -
interested user", par excellence, who "just wants to use the thing". And
the BM Lyon, lucky them, are caught in the middle of the very "Netscape
vs. Microsoft" / "antitrust" / "browser wars" battle which they thought
was merely an American business headline. More and better standards --
better - observed by Mountain View and Redmond to the aid of Lyon -- might
help everybody, here.
So, 8 criteria, and an excellent "digital library" effort by the BM Lyon.
One of these days digital information all will be accessible and easy to
use and up to date -- and "ubiquitous" and "invisible" and "inexpensive",
as XeroxPARC says -- but at least if it can be as interesting and
attractive as "Enluminures" is so far, the world will be a better place.
--oOo--
Announcement: as mentioned above --
* De'bat: "Les bibliothe`ques, l'extre^me droite et la violence des mots"
Salon du Livre -- Paris Expo - porte de Versailles -- salle Machado de
Assis, lundi 23 mars, de 15 h a` 16h30 -- see,
http://www.logicom.fr/SalonDuLivre/default.html
"Comment les bibliothe`ques peuvent - elles re'pondre aux pressions des
mouvements d'extre^me - droite qui souhaitent, sous pre'texte de
pluralisme, en faire des instruments de diffusion de leurs ide'es ?"
Organized by: L'association Me'moires vives, BP 935 75519 Paris cedex 15
Participants: anime' par Anne - Marie Bertrand (Me'moires vives), avec
* Marie - Pascale Bonnal (ABF - Provence - Alpes - Co^te d'Azur)
* Thierry Ermakoff (BM de Blois)
* Franc,ois Rouyer - Gayette (BM de Montreuil)
* Maryse Souchard (co-auteur de _Le Pen, les mots_, Le Monde -
Editions)
--oOo--
FYI France (sm)(tm) e-journal ISSN 1071 - 5916
*
| FYI France (sm)(tm) is a monthly electronic journal,
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| experiment, in the creation of large - scale
| "information overload", by Jack Kessler. Any material
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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.
--oOo--
