[13311] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
FYI France: digital library sites for pros / beginners
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jack Kessler)
Tue May 16 20:04:08 2000
Date: Mon, 15 May 2000 12:29:52 -0700
From: Jack Kessler <kessler@WELL.COM>
To: PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU>
Message-Id: <Pine.GSO.4.10.10005121733240.14187-100000@well.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
FYI France: two interesting new digital library sites, in France,
for pros and for beginners...
1) for digital library developers / theorists / geeks,
INRIA, Centre Virtuel de De'mos, De'monstrations interactives
-- the very latest, leading - edge, fun and fascinating work at
the highest levels currently under pursuit in France in "digital
library" approaches and techniques -- online demos which you can
try out yourself;
2) and, for readers of French literature,
La Bibliothe`que Bage'
-- interesting work at digitizing, and providing online free of
charge, the classics of French literature -- and, just perhaps, a
harbinger of things to come in online epublishing, as this
appears to be a solo effort, extremely simple and extraordinarily
useful, and perhaps increasingly threatening to the likes of "the
corner bookshop" and "Amazon.com" and "the local library"?...
Details:
1) INRIA / Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et
Automatique -- Centre Virtuel de De'mos, De'monstrations
interactives
http://www.inria.fr/multimedia/CentreVirtuelDemos/demos-web-interactive.html
The INRIA was founded in 1967 to be the French national
"computerization" research center, reporting jointly to the
Ministe`re de la Recherche and the Ministe`re de l'Economie, des
Finances et de l'Industrie -- currently 2000+ researchers and
other personnel, spread over five centers:
* Rocquencourt (Versailles)
* Lorraine (Nancy, Metz)
* Rennes
* Rho^ne - Alpes (Grenoble)
* Sophia Antipolis
Other interesting computer work is done elsewhere in France, as
well, but some of the best comes out of the INRIA.
Their main Website's "Centre Virtuel de De'mos" presents showcase
research projects currently under way or just completed. This is
not just "student work", but real research applications: both in
- search - of - funding and about - to - be - funded, remembering
that in France it is not the IPO / Venture Capital process which
gets this done but The Government...
So, for a continually - interesting look at how the French
research community, at any rate, views the development of digital
applications, consider a couple of the latest INRIA projects:
Image search / retrieval --
* Surfimage : Content-based Image Retrieval with
Relevance Feedback -- Multimedia : indexation, navigation et
recherche -- "Research images by their content. Choices of
spatial representation and calculation of significant attributes
of images, index construction (compromises between costs of
storage and costs of search and retrieval)." (tr. jk) --
"Surfimage is an interactive content-based image retrieval (CBIR)
software. Unlike a classical keyword-based search, a CBIR
software retrieves images by analysing their perceptual content.
Images do not need to be viewed before or interpreted by humans.
No meta-data nor keywords are required." -- "3D objects",
"Faces", "Textures", "Monuments".
http://www-rocq.inria.fr/cgi-bin/imedia/surfimage.cgi
You flip through images, clicking "R for relevant" or "N for
not", then "Refine Search" improves your results... works OK...
n.b. There is a full library of wonderful online images of some
of the finest architectural and other artistic treasures in
France, provided by the Caisse Nationale des Monuments
Historiques, to be seen online here at Surfimage "Monuments"...
Multilingual access -- a second INRIA project available online --
* Xcorpus: "Dialogue homme - machine a` forte composante
langagie`re" -- "This demonstration has been implemented in the
context of a European Lingua project dedicated to the use of
aligned multilingual texts for teaching purposes. In the
following pages you can select one among the available
translations of a given text and then express a query in one of
the two languages (source or target) corresponding to a word or a
regular expression you are looking for. The multilingual
concordancer produces as a result the pairs of sentences which
match the query."
Texts currently available -- remarkable selection --
A Brief History Of Time
Author : Stephen Hawking
Source Language :EN
Targets Languages : FR - DE - IT
L'ILE NOIRE
Author : Herge
Source Language :FR
Targets Languages : DA - EN - DE - PT
Le Petit Prince
Author : Antoine de Saint Exupery
Source Language :FR
Targets Languages : EN - DA - DE
IL DESERTO DEI TARTARI
Author : Dino Buzzati
Source Language :IT
Targets Languages : EN - FR - DE
LE TEMPLE DU SOLEIL
Author : Herge
Source Language :FR
Targets Languages : DA - ES - IT - PT
Euro Disney
Author : Michelin
Source Language :FR
Target Language : EN
i.e. "petit prince" finds,
"Et c'est ainsi que je fis la connaissance du petit prince."
"And that is how I made the acquaintance of the little prince."
http://www.loria.fr/LORIA/EXT/demos/Xcorpus/index.html
I never thought I'd see Stephen Hawking, Herge', and Saint -
Exupe'ry all mentioned in the same breath, but I guess that
in linguistics anything is possible...
And that final "Euro Disney / Author : Michelin" text is some
social commentary in itself -- no hits for "Mickey Mouse"...
Of course a lot of people, in a lot of places, are working on
multimedia image storage and retrieval systems now. But it is
good for researchers in the US to remember how important
multilingual access is overseas: the French are working hard on
this -- in the US we tend to forget, dangerously, that the
international users won't all speak English...
The second site:
2) La Bibliothe`que Bage'
http://altern.org/bouquins/
This site could not be more _un_ - like the preceding one. As
enormous, and government - directed - and - funded, and tied in
to "France" and "Europe", as INRIA is -- traditional "Grande
Ecole / Colbertisme" France at its best and occasionally worst --
"La Bibliothe`que Bage'" appears to be small and independent and
maverick and, as such, something very new to French traditions,
brought to France now by the Internet.
The site is subject to all of the usual quirks of any independent
- minded effort -- the first selection, for "Euge'nie Grandet",
currently leads to an error page, and the Hugo "Les Cha^timents"
dumps a "music" icon into your download which can make a MIDI
player pop up when you click on the "zip" file... -- nevertheless
eventually you do get to Hugo,
"Qu'en pense Papavoine et qu'en dit Loyola ?
Maintenant nous ferons voter ces dro^les - la`.
Partout en lettres d'or nous e'crirons le chiffre. -
Gai ! tapez sur la caisse et soufflez dans le fifre..."
My general thought being that this may be the type of effort
which increasingly, for worse or for better, will be bringing us
literature:
Readers here will be familiar with "Project Gutenberg" and "ABU"
and "the demise of the book" and "the paperless library" -- all
of the promise, and hype, which have emanated from digital media
and etext writing so far. But now have a look at this
"Bibliothe`que Bage'" site. This particular epublisher -- one
"Christophe Baegert"? -- has done an excellent job at producing a
straight and simple, if occasionally flawed, digital rendition of
several major French text classics which now anyone, anywhere in
the world, can download and read and poke through, using
"stringsearch" computer functions and "cut and paste" into term
papers, etc....
And Baegert's "Bibliothe`que Bage'" appears to be unhindered by
the preconceived notions and naive'te' which characterized
earlier epublishing efforts. There are two nice little
unapologetically - commercial banner - ads on the site already --
something called "biographie.net", and a "Dernie`res.com" news -
service...
"Bibliothe`que Bage'" also has not either over - or under - done
its initial offering, although I hope that it will be adding
more: the current selection of 10 classic French texts -- Balzac,
Diderot, Gautier, Hugo, Poe, Proust, Verne, Voltaire, Zola --
offers enough certainly for anyone searching through Google or
Yahoo for one of the texts to become interested in the others.
So "Bibliothe`que Bage'" is a good start. More important, in its
very simplicity it is an excellent demonstration of how a vast
number of people can do this sort of epublishing online now:
-- and Stephen King is epublishing 400,000+ copies of his latest
work online, taking home far more than the 10% of the proceeds
previously allotted to him by print publishers... and mp3.com
offers vast numbers of music recordings online for free now...
and napster.com allows hundreds of thousands to epublish music
which they "trade" with others for still other music... so
publishing is no place for a monopolist, or the oligopolists,
any longer...
--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 email address, and, b) it
// \\ isn't going to make them money: 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 may be found at http://infolib.berkeley.edu
(search fyifrance), or http://www.cru.fr/listes/biblio-fr@cru.fr/
(BIBLIO-FR archive), or http://listserv.uh.edu/archives/pacs-l.html
(PACS-L archive) or 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 except as expressed above.
--hjlm--
