[12260] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
FYI France: National Patrimony, "Foreign" Digits
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jack Kessler)
Tue Jun 16 20:03:06 1998
Date: Tue, 16 Jun 1998 18:19:14 -0500
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----------------------------
FYI France: "National Patrimony, 'Foreign' Digits"
The following is an excerpt from an upcoming talk entitled,
"France: National Patrimony, 'Foreign' Digits"
to be delivered to a session at the American Library Association
convention in Washington D.C. on June 29. I thought it might be of
interest here, and I would be grateful for any comments. The general
subject of the session is "Digitizing a Continent: National - Level
Planning for Western European Libraries", and I myself will be describing
the French: objectively I hope, dispassionately I hope not.
If any of you can attend: it will be the program of the ACRL / Association
of College and Research Libraries, Western European Specialists' Section
and the Arts Section -- Monday, June 29, 9:30-11:30 a.m. Loews L'Enfant
Plaza - Grand Ballroom A,B --
http://www.library.upenn.edu/~lehmann/program.html
For those who cannot be there in person, and for attendees as well, the
talk will provide the structure for the new feature on the FYI France
Online Service, "How to Digitize a Nation...": text plus references and
notes and images and copious "links" -- some at least of the latter
providing examples supporting the assertions made below -- all in a file
which hopefully will grow, with time and reader protests and criticisms
and debates and suggestions, to debut in July at http://www.fyifrance.com
--oOo--
France: National Patrimony, "Foreign" Digits (excerpt)
by Jack Kessler, kessler@well.sf.ca.us
"Digitization" is a moving target, in France as it is elsewhere. The
techniques and the people and the organizations and the projects involved
-- and the standards and the goals and the aspirations -- all change,
rapidly, on a nearly continuous basis.
The target in focus for my purposes here, however, at least is French.
This may give some of what I will be describing here something in common.
Then again it may not. France has been famous for centuries for asserting
its individuality. But if one believes half of what the "Europe of the
Regions" people say and advocate, that French uniqueness today is under
siege: there are people in Lyon now who say they have much in common with
Frankfurt -- there are people in Grenoble and Sophia Antipolis today who
feel they have more in common with Cupertino than they do with Paris.
This sort of thing has been said before, though. For a thousand years,
French individuality has succeeded in asserting and occasionally in re -
asserting itself, various pan - European trends and occasional cataclysmic
events notwithstanding. French topography, culture and people are
resolutely different: different from the rest of Europe, perhaps, but
certainly and here importantly different from the Anglo - American
cultures which have spawned the current "hi - tech" revolution.
So, even in these days of the "European Union" and the "Euro", the French
approach may have something to say that is unique: particularly to a
technological revolution like "Digitization", bound as it has been
culturally to its Anglo - American and English - language origins, and
interested as it is now in expanding its reach beyond those cultures.
1) Actors
In France today the people involved in digitization are drawn from a range
comparable in breadth to the great variety found in similar efforts in
the US and elsewhere.
Government has a role in digitization in France, at all levels, as do the
private sector, the education sector, independent and quasi - independent
organizations of many types, and numerous -- nearly countless, as
elsewhere -- individuals. The only thing really lacking in France, as
nearly everywhere except in the US, is the Venture Capital industry, which
started off the whole revolution in the US in the first place and which
sustains it there still today.
Government
Government is involved in digitization in France now at every level, in
nearly every political unit and venue in the country, no matter how tiny,
remote, and removed from the central French governmental monolith at
Paris.
Web sites for the smallest villages and the strangest French regional
governmental entities can be found online now. Local, regional and
national government financial and technical support can be obtained for
nearly any conceivable project involving digital information, from
mounting a Website for a school or a town to scanning a local archive to
promoting "interactive poetry" and developing children's writing projects.
The recent explosion in French government support for "digital" activity
is not so different from such support found elsewhere: schools in the US
benefit from or at least are deluged by numerous government programs which
supply them with computers -- the Internet in the US enjoyed government
support in its beginnings, and may face government regulation and perhaps
even government taxation in its future.
But government support in France for digitization exhibits at least two
fundamental differences which make it unique, certainly as compared to
government activity in the US:
1) Supra - National Government.
As a part of "Europe" -- as an active, almost desperately aggressive
promoter of the European Union -- France participates in vast numbers of
EU - sponsored competitions to develop digitization techniques and
applications. These EU competitions entail benefits and restrictions not
involved in simply - national efforts: multilingual access is mandated,
as are international collaboration and standardized procedures for
devlopment and evaluation.
EU "calls for proposals" emerge with promising but sometimes alarming
regularity from the corridors of "DGXII" and "DGXIII" and many of the
other European "directorates". They pay for a great deal which looks very
promising -- although one sometimes wonders where they went, as so many of
them simply disappear once the competition is done.
There is no parallel for this supra - national government level in the
digitization efforts of the US, or really of any other non - European
country. "International aid" does not qualify: in "European" governmental
digitization activities these are not poverty cases, or client - states
accepting largesse, but relatively equal participants in the decision -
making process which produces the projects -- if French decision - makers
feel a necessity for digitization projects protecting their version of
"cultural patrimony", they have a chance here of creating these
themselves.
"Supra - national" EU government activity has been analyzed perhaps too
much, and criticized for its complexity and bureaucracy as much as praised
for the depth of its financial support and the breadth of its approach.
But it certainly represents a unique aspect of the French digitization
situation, one of which Americans operating in Europe ought at least to be
aware.
2) 12+% national unemployment, and Industrial Policy.
A second "uniquely - French" factor in digitization also emanates from a
very general source. The US economy is booming, the French are flat on
their backs -- this distinction makes a tremendous difference.
The US realizes that its national economics has made the transition from
an agricultural to an industrial to a "service" economy. There is plenty
of literature, and plenty of harsh economic reality, to attest to this
change. US farmers have all but disappeared, US industrial unions have
shrunk almost beyond recognition, the US workforce, once "redneck" and
"blue collar", has become predominantly "white collar" -- one might almost
say "pocket protector" -- and now is employed in "service industries".
These same economic changes and transitions have occurred in France, but
more recently and at far greater economic and social and political cost.
French agriculture has shifted from the broad national voting majority
which it held in the last century to the small beleaguered society of
vested interests which it is today. French villages have shrunk. French
industrial unions are much - diminished in membership and, although they
still are vocal -- like the remaining farmers -- the unions are much -
diminished in political authority and popular support.
France in addition has persistent national unemployment of over 12%, and
the rising social discontent and unrest which logically accompany this.
The US figures never got this bad during the recent recessions, and now
the US has recovered to achieve one of the best employment situations in
its history.
France, however, appears to be getting worse. Fears and insecurity about
job tenure and the reduction of the social welfare "safety net" -- and
other arguably - necessary economic measures -- now are supplemented by
the terrors of urban crime waves, and crippling strikes by a rising army
of "the unemployed", and the rise of the country's first significant
extremist right - wing party since the second World War.
Government in France perhaps naturally and understandably is searching for
saviors -- critics would say panaceas -- and to some extent is finding
these in "hi - tech".
This happens elsewhere, as well. In the US, the multiple problems of the
education sector often get "computerization" and "the Internet" simply
thrown at them, as though any one measure -- particularly a single
technical innovation -- could solve a series of complex social problems,
and do so overnight.
But this temptation is so much greater in France, where the economic
problems currently are so much more severe.
Political figures -- from the national Prime Minister on down to local
organizers -- are personally involved in the digitization effort in
France. The politicians are involved in the US as well, of course, but in
France the urgency is greater. The US is the world's major industrial and
agricultural and political power, and France is not. The US can coast on
its national debt and trade imbalance and current gross domestic product
and unemployment figures for a considerable time if it needs to -- France
cannot.
French national economic policy needs some quick solutions: the general
"service economy" model -- and specifically "hi - tech" and the cutting
edge of that, "digitization" -- in desperate times could be seen as, and
could dangerously become, just such a "quick fix".
(excerpt -- full outline follows)
--oOo--
"Digitizing a Continent: National - Level Planning
for Western European Libraries"
ALA / American Library Association Annual Conference, ACRL / Association
of College and Research Libraries, Western European Specialists' Section
and the Arts Section -- Monday, June 29, 9:30-11:30 a.m. Loews L'Enfant
Plaza - Grand Ballroom A,B --
"France: National Patrimony, 'Foreign' Digits"
by Jack Kessler, kessler@well.sf.ca.us
Outline
1) Actors
* Government (excerpt shown here, above)
* Private Sector
* Education
* Organizations -- libraries
* Individuals
* Venture Capital
2) Arenas
* Fe^tes
* Arts
* Preservation
* Continuing Education
* Commentary
* Chronology
3) Digital Democracy?
4) Digitization and "Foreign" Techniques
("How to Digitize A Nation...", with notes,
references, images and links, to appear
beginning in July on http://www.fyifrance.com )
--oOo--
FYI France (sm)(tm) e-journal ISSN 1071 - 5916
*
| FYI France (sm)(tm) is a monthly electronic journal,
| 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
fyifrance), or http://www.cru.fr/listes/biblio-fr@cru.fr/ (BIBLIO-FR
econference archive), or at http://www.fyifrance.com , or at
http://listserv.uh.edu/archives/pacs-l.html . 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.
--oOo--
