[13570] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
FYI France: BNdF online priorities, & Se'nat Report
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jack Kessler)
Mon Oct 16 20:07:16 2000
Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2000 15:36:53 -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>
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FYI France: the BNdF -- online library priorities, and a Se'nat
report...
Yes, the CCFR / Catalogue Collectif de FRance and in fact the
entire BNdF / Bibliothe`que Nationale de France have been down
for several days now -- the Website, the online catalog, the
building, the library (Tolbiac, I don't know about the other
locations);
and No, I do not know when they will be back up;
and Yes, these things can be avoided or at least their impact
reduced by running parallel backup systems in remote locations;
and No, I do not know why the BNdF has not done this...
Some detail may be obtained from the announcement which follows,
which since Wednesday I have received from several people and
seen posted in several places -- no original attribution --
rumors are that the closure will continue for 10 days --
"En raison d'un incendie dans un souterrain proche de la
BNF, celle-ci est ferme'e jusqu'a` nouvel ordre. Les
serveurs Web ainsi que le serveur d'email n'est plus
accessible : tous les emails adresse's aux membres de la
BNF toute entie`re (Tolbiac ET Richelieu) ne passent
plus..."
-- and some explanation might / might not? be provided in what
follows next: a new report, available online both in HTML and for
Acrobat downloading, by the Senate of France, entitled --
"La Bibliothe`que nationale de France: un chantier inacheve'"
No. 451 -- Se'nat -- session ordinaire de 1999-2000 --
annexe au proce`s verbal de la se'ance du 29 juin 2000 --
Rapport d'Information -- Par MM. Philippe Nachbar et
Philippe Richert -- Commission des affaires culturelles.
URL: http://www.senat.fr/rap/r99-451/r99-451.html
This "Rapport" is a fascinating, remarkable document, capable of
providing grist for many mills -- pro - BNdF and anti- and
otherwise -- which might be concerned with libraries and / or
digital information and / or the governance of large public
projects and / or cultural politics, and all of the above in
France but also elsewhere, and particularly remembering that it
is the US and not France which is unique in the world in its
approach to most of these things...
The French Senate -- yes, this is their national governmental
body -- is a very different institution from the one which sits
in the US Capitol building in Washington D.C.. In France, the
Senate functions primarily in an advisory capacity to the
government -- a capacity which can be both weaker and stronger
than that of the Senate in the US. The French Assembly, not the
Senate, does most of France's legislating.
But the elder statespersons [sorry, just had to] who sit in the
French Senate are powerfully connected in French local politics
-- moreso than are many US Senators, who these days spend so much
more of their time in D.C. than they ever do "at home" -- and so
much so that in France getting a thing dictated by the national
government "done", at the local level, often can depend on
securing the good will of influential Senate members.
(For the original and perhaps more "politically correct" version
on all of this I refer both sceptics and the merely curious to
the Se'nat's own excellent website, at http://www.senat.fr/.)
So a report by the Senate in France, such as this one on the
BNdF, although it may not have the "legal" effect of a Senate
document in the US, may have an even greater "practical" effect
than a US Senate document might -- if and to the extent that the
Senatorial names attached to it command great influence, in
influence - sensitive France. The names "attached" to this BNdF
document do. Some of you will recognise several. A French
government bureaucrat who ignores any report bearing such names
will do so very much at the peril of, at least, success in
getting other things done in the future, "locally" or otherwise.
Rather than trying to summarize or certainly interpret what the
Senators are saying, in approving / releasing this "Rapport" on
their BNdF -- that would be a mystical exercise at best,
particularly in a situation so charged with politics and national
pride, and particularly in Paris -- here hopefully it will be
enough simply to show the Rapport's provocatively - couched table
of contents wording. Even in the titles, one finds plenty of
ironies / much "double entendre" / grist for many mills.
So I have "taken a shot", in the following, at a few translations
into English. These appear in square brackets: []. Those with
some general interest in any of this thus can get a sense, at
least, of the take of the Senate of France on it by reading what
follows. Those of you with detailed interest piqued by what
appears here can click on the URL above and read the original.
But bonne chance on "interpreting" any of it. Political hay is
being made here, clearly. I myself am not French, however, and I
am no expert on their political affairs -- either generally or
these in particular -- so I leave interpretation of what follows
to those who are, and to those who feel that they are:
"La Bibliothe`que nationale de France:
un chantier inacheve'"
["The Bibliothe`que nationale de France:
a work - in - progress /
a project not - yet - achieved /
a target unattained"...]
I. Le Tribut Du Passe' ["A Legacy from the Past"]
A. Un Ba^timent Victime Des Viscissitudes Du Projet De "Tre`s
Grande Bibliothe`que" ["A Building Victim to the Vicissitudes of
a Project to Build a 'Tre`s Grande Bibliothe`que'"]
1. Un ba^timent conc,u autour d'un projet ambitieux et
impre'cis ["A Building Conceived as a Part of an Ambitious and
Imprecise Project"]
2. Un choix architectural ha^tif ["A Hasty Architectural
Choice"]
3. Un projet controverse' ["A Controversial Project"]
4. Un manque d'unite' dans la conduite du projet ["A Lack of
Unity in the Conduct of the Project"]
B. Un Ba^timent Inadapte' ["A Poorly Adapted Building"]
1. Un ba^timent conside're' comme un handicap ["A Building
Considered as a Handicap"]
2. Un ba^timent coûteux ["An Expensive Building"]
II. Une Institution En E'tat De Marche ["An Ongoing Institution"]
A. Les Difficulte's De L'Ouverture ["Difficulties in Getting it
Open"]
1. Une ouverture retarde'e ["Difficulties in Getting it Open
Late"]
2. Les dysfonctionnements de la nouvelle bibliothe`que ["A
Dysfunctional New Library"]
B. Des Ame'liorations Significatives Apporte'es Au
Fonctionnement de la BNF ["Significant Improvements for the
Functioning of the BNF"]
1. Un meilleur service rendu aux lecteurs ["Better service for
the users"]
2. Un effort de modernisation de la gestion de l'e'tablissement
["Some attempt to modernize the management"]
III. Un Projet Qui N'Est Pas Encore Acheve' ["A Project Not Yet
Achieved"]
A. Assurer Le Bon Fonctionnement Du Site De Tolbiac ["To
Modernize the Functioning of the Tolbiac Site..."]
1. Achever l'informatisation ["Finishing the computerization"]
2. Ouvrir la bibliothe`que ["Opening the library"]
3. Ame'liorer les conditions de gestion ["Improving the
management"]
B. Moderniser Ses Missions Traditionnelles ["To Modernize its
Traditional Missions..."]
1. Garantir l'avenir des collections spe'cialise'es
["Safeguarding the future of its Special Collections"]
2. Vers une meilleure gestion du de'po^t le'gal ? ["Towards
better management of its Copyright Deposit?"]
C. Tirer Parti De L'Investissement Consenti Par La Nation ["To
Make Good on the Investment Granted to it by the Nation..."]
1. Assurer la continuite' des collections et leur conservation
["Assure the continuity of the collections and their
conservation"]
2. Mieux prendre en compte la ne'cessite' de la mise en re'seau
["Organize things better"]
3. E'laborer une strate'gie pour l'e'tablissement ["Come up
with a plan..."]
-- that gives you some idea of the tone -- juicy titles / juicy
reading. I hope that my American English translations convey the
ironic / sarcastic / groping - for - "constructive" flavor of the
French original without badly distorting its meaning... my ideal
in translating always has been the very - English Arthur Waley,
who once rendered a line of classical Chinese as "Madly singing
in the mountains"...
But I do think I have gotten the proper sense of the French in
the original, here. The report's text actually begins -- no
fooling, this is verbatim -- "Mesdames, Messieurs, Faut-il
de'truire les quatre tours de Tolbiac?"... and then runs into a
sort of French equivalent of, "but seriously, folks..."
The French Senate -- 5th Republic (1958) version but also the
very much older general ideas which went into that -- is, to an
American mind, sort of a combination of the House of Lords in
Britain, both post- and pre - Blair in fact, and many of the
original ideas which went into our own US Senate. A "council of
elders" was wanted, in all three cases -- for wisdom, for sage
advice, for "the long view", where "juniors" tend to be short on
all three things -- presumably it was largely "elders", in all
three cases, who pushed for this.
But nobody wanted to give the "council of elders" any, or much,
real power to "take action" -- action being both more the
specialty of juniors, and better controlled by "the people" in a
democracy than elders might be.
Each solution went it's separate way, in practical application.
The US Senate became both active and powerful -- more powerful
and more active in fact, for many purposes, than its opposite
house. The British House of Lords went from vastly powerful to
relatively toothless, certainly now post - Blair's radical reform
of it but even for many years before. And the French have a
solution, now, which is somewhat in the middle: with the largely
- elderly / honorary senators declaring and advising and
sometimes being taken seriously and sometimes not -- still, BNdF
librarians would entirely ignore such a report at their peril.
-- and some day, hopefully soon, all organizations / institutions
/ individuals in the information arena will realize that their
online / "virtual" presence finally is taking _higher_ priority
than "real" presence -- the hardworking BNdF online librarians
deserve better -- i.e. even if the building closes, goes on
strike, gets eaten by bugs, burns, whatever, in the Age of the
Internet and in any digital age an institution's online presence,
a) _reaches more people_, and gradually even is
b) _supplying more information_, and
c) _must be kept open_ -- run parallel, folks
-- it's so easy, all it takes is money...
--oOo--
FYI France (sm)(tm) e-journal ISSN 1071 - 5916
*
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