[14572] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
FYI France: the European Library Automation Group / ELAG
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jack Kessler)
Mon Nov 18 20:04:37 2002
Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2002 18:58:01 -0800
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 European Library Automation Group / ELAG
It is difficult at its easiest to obtain an overview of library
developments in Europe -- much moreso any overview of European
library automation, digital libraries, and particularly
controversial new topics such as media convergence.
Translated works usually err in two directions: either they are
too general, providing keen conceptual discussion but with little
linkage to real projects, or they are too specific, providing
project detail without the necessary context. "Europe", these
days, offers much in generalities, and plenty of exciting
projects to look at, but not too much to tie the two together.
For Europeans themselves, country - specific studies emerge from
national groups, and Brussels bravely soldiers on trying to
describe the overall picture, but it is difficult to synthesize.
For a non - European, unfamiliar with the hierarchies and
organizations of the new "Europe", it becomes impossible.
The European Library Automation Group / ELAG bridges these gaps
-- for 30 years, according to Marc Chauveinc, and now counting
450 members in 27 countries. They just have published a very
useful conference report, "Archives, Libraries and Museums
Convergence", edited by Maria Witt of the Cite' des Sciences
Me'diathe`que and Majid Ihadjadene of the universite' de Paris X,
which can be read profitably, by either a European or a
foreigner, to obtain either a general overview or a detailed
description of the latest projects.
Full cite:
* Archives, libraries and museums convergence : the 24th Library
Systems Seminar, Paris [Cite' des sciences et de l'industrie],
12-14 April 2000 = Archives, bibliothe`ques et muse'es / actes
re'unis et publie's par Maria Witt et Majid Ihadjadene ;
programme scientifique sous la dir. de Paula Goossens ; avant -
propos de Pietro Corsi ; tableaux de Jacques Poirier (Paris :
Cite' des sciences et de l'industrie, 2001) pp. 445, 24cm., ISBN
2-86842-146-6.
The volume includes, "Papers / Conferences", "Workshops /
Ateliers", and, perhaps most interestingly of all for those in
search of an overview, country - specific "Progress Reports":
-- both Europeans and non - Europeans might note the presence
among that last, now, of descriptions of "Latvia", "Lithuania",
"Moldova", and several others which have not always been there
before -- things change --
* Papers / Conferences
* ELAG, past and present (in English & in French) -- Marc
Chauveinc
* Walking over the ALM (Eng&Fre) -- Jan van der Starre
* VisualCat Cataloguing Client (Eng) -- Poul Henrik
Jo/rgensen
* Electronic resources : from their deposit "BIBLINK" to
their long term preservation "NEDLIB" (Eng&Fre) --
Elisabeth Freyre
* Profiling ALM applications (Eng&Fre)-- Liv Holm
* OCLC's CORC project: The Cooperative Online Resource
Catalog (Eng) -- Stuart Hunt
* Pre'sentation du service CORC d'OCLC (Fre) -- Catherine
Marandas, Se'bastien Lemerle
* Globalization and the Unicode (tm) Standard (Eng&Fre)
-- Vinod Chachra
* The SBN virtual Catalog : a cross searching
implementation (Eng&Fre) -- Claudia Parmeggiani
* The Louvre WEB sites: realisations and projects
(Eng&Fre) -- Anne - Laure Ranoux
* ONE-2, Bath & danZIG Profiles (Eng) -- Poul Henrik
Jo/rgensen
* Access to information on the museums through the
networks (Eng&Fre) -- Philippe Avenier
* Workshops / Ateliers
* Digital Libraries (Eng) -- Christian Lupovici
* Towards a common conceptual model for (A)LM (Eng&Fre)
-- Patrick Le Boeuf
* Introduction to the ICOM / CIDOC Conceptual Reference
Model (Eng&Fre) -- Nicholas Crofts
* Metadata update (Eng&Fre) -- Ole Husby
* Library consortia: system management (Eng&Fre) --
Martin Svoboda
* Cultural Heritage (Eng) -- Nancy Elkington
* Archiving Electronic Documents (Eng&Fre) -- Alexis
Rivier
* Identification of electronic resources (Eng&Fre) --
Theo van Veen
* Intelligent agents (Eng) -- Lex Sijtsma
* Design of an intelligent library system: some lessons
learned from Web searching experience (Eng&Fre) --
Majid Ihadjadene
* Progress Reports
* Albania
The Project: "Automation of National Library"
* Belarus
Belarusian State University Fundamental Library (BSUFL)
* Belgium
KBR (Royal Library of Belgium)
* Croatia
National and University Library, Zagreb, Croatia
* Czech Republic
National Library of the Czech Republic
State Technical Library
* Finland
ATP Origo (English)
ATP Origo (Franc,ais)
Helsinki University Library - National Library of Finland
* France
Bibliothe`que Cujas
Le centre de documentation du muse'e de la musique
Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, Services de
Documentation
Me'diathe`que de la Cite' des Sciences
Service des nume'rotations internationales (BNF)
University of Marne - la - Valle'e
* Italy
Istituto Centrale per il catalogo Unico delle Biblioteche
Italiane (ICCU)
National Library Service (SBN) in Lombardy
* Latvia
Latvian Academic Library
Library Information Network Consortium
* Lithuania
The National Martynas Mazvydas Libary of Lithuania (NLL)
* Moldova
National Librarianship Council of Moldova
* Netherlands
ADLIB Information Systems BV
Johan Van Halm information consultancy
Koninklijke Bibliotheek, National Library of the
Netherlands
Library Wageningen University and Research
* Norway
BIBSYS
Oslo University College -- Faculty of Journalism, Library
and Information Science
* Russian Federation
Russian National Public Library for Science & Technology
St. Petersburg State Technical University
* Serbia
The National and University Library of Republica Srpska
* Slovenia
Institute of Information Science
National and University Library
University of Maribor Library
* Spain
Consorci de Biblioteques Universitaries de Catalunya (CBUC)
* Switzerland
Bibliothe`que publique et universitaire
Swiss national library
* Ukraine
University of Kyiv - Mohyla Academy Library
The volume offers, in addition, various "extra" features:
-- avant --
* A description of ELAG by its president, Paula Goossens;
* an introduction by Pietro Corsi;
* a preface by co - editor Maria Witt;
* and the text of the conference welcome speech by the
president of the Cite' des Sciences, Michel Demazure.
-- apre's --
* Statements by the sponsors, of possibly great interest
to readers outside of Europe wondering how, given all of
the recent changes, automation in Europe is proceeding now;
* a very interesting and partially - annotated
bibliography by Maria Witt, entitled
"Selected references concerning the topic 'ALM
(Archives, Libraries and Museums) convergence'
and some other documents on the related topics";
* a List of Participants;
* and a List of Past and Future ELAG seminars.
And there even are handsome illustrations, this being a volume on
"media convergence" after all: the bibliography comes complete
with a very nice "Musei sive Bibliothecae tain privatae quam
publicae... Lugduni Sumptibus Iacobi Prost MDCXXXV" etc. title
page print, and there are other prints of equal interest
scattered throughout the text -- and, at the end, seven extremely
interesting and very "bookish" works by the painter Jacques
Poirier are beautifully reproduced.
At a time when the world, which once was growing smaller, now
seems to be simply fragmenting, in so many ways, it is at least
comforting if not downright necessary to get an overview of
things, in any field.
It has become so difficult now to obtain books and journals about
Europe, in the US -- and increasingly it has become difficult to
get printed information of certain types about the US, in Europe
-- in both cases the excuses given usually are economic,
something about the prices of journals and so on, although
sometimes one has to wonder...
If the fragments are going to continue to communicate, over all
of the brave new communications media which they have developed,
they need to continue finding out about each other.
Books such as the one described here help: synthesis, but also
the details and the particulars -- not just the details, and not
just the vapid generalities which lead so often more to
misunderstanding than to knowledge. And the nice thing about a
printed book is that it is not just another part of the digital
information overload -- all of those bits and bytes -- which now
deluges all of us, in Europe and elsewhere, so that knowledge
instead of increasing becomes overwhelming, and shrinks, or even
sometimes dies completely.
I wish, myself, that I could find more European books and
magazines and newspapers on US shelves now -- they are expensive,
when you can find them -- and in Europe one no longer finds at
least the inexpensive US publications as readily as before, it
seems. Now one instead is guided, or rather directed, to the
overflowing Internet...
But unless a _manageable_ amount of information continues to be
exchanged, mutual understanding truly will escape us. So I hope
that some in the US and Asia and Latin America will read this
book, and that Europeans will continue reading more than just the
awful news headlines about all of those places as well. Perhaps
if we all just stopped watching the televisions...
--oOo--
FYI France (sm)(tm) e-journal ISSN 1071 - 5916
*
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