FYI France: _Internet Digital Libraries_, "France" chapter, pt.1/4 This issue of FYI France presents two items: 1) FYI France Online Service -- http://www.fyifrance.com -- New Rapid - Access indexpage now in place!; and, 2) _Internet Digital Libraries : The International Dimension_ book excerpt -- its chapter on "France", part 1/4. XXX 1) FYI France Online Service: Rapid Access indexpage The FYI France Online Service, at http://www.fyifrance , now has a newly - designed "Rapid Access" indexpage, for those of you who love the images but do not love their response time. You now reach the Rapid Access indexpage first. From there you can go on to the prettier homepage, or direct to the 12 content pages. Please try it out and let me know what you think: access still is free of charge until the end of this year. 2) _Internet Digital Libraries_ excerpt. This month's FYI France issue excerpts the chapter on France from my forthcoming book, _Internet Digital Libraries: the International Dimension_ (Boston and London : Artech House, Dec 1996). The purpose of the book is to present an international assortment of current "digital library" projects, to investigate what the "library" part in the often - heard "Digital Library" label really means. The excerpt here has been edited heavily for this email version. This also is an early version, from before my able editors got to work on it. The full outline of the book appears at the end of Part 2 of this issue. For now, here is what it says about France and the French: Chapter 4: France -- Flexible Centralization -- 137,217 Internet hosts as of January, 1966: 1 Internet host per 422 French people (per Network Wizards, http://www.nw.com, and CIA World FactBook 1995, http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/95fact/index.html). [189,786 Internet hosts in France as of July, 1996: a 38% increase in 6 months! JK] The idea of "library" in France has a long and special history. The French record with their "bibliothe`ques" not only is political but is inter - related, intimately, with the historical development of the French monarchy and the political viability of the French state [1]. Some of the oldest and still often - repeated stories of the French Bibliothe`que Nationale concern an invasion of France by the English, and the seizure and dispersal of the collected books by the invaders. Modern French book collections trace their existence, in most cases, to political upheaval: to Viking invasions and the flight of manuscripts from one monastic armarius / book - chest to another, to threatened and real burning at the hands of some faction during the Wars of Religion, or to "liberations" of "First" and "Second" Estate collections by the "Third" during the Revolution. This political history -- one might say political and national and generally governance - oriented history -- still is very much in mind among the modern French. Regional collections jealously guard their independence of Paris, remembering the political dangers in the capital which their collections were spared by having been sequestered in the provinces during the Revolution. In Paris itself, decisions which might never be made in the provinces are made and executed with alacrity: Parisians are moving one of the world's largest libraries across the city in 1996, the result of a policy being executed only eight years after it was first suggested: such speed on such a major project rarely is found in other national capitals elsewhere in the world, much less in a French provincial government center. As with book libraries, so with online services and other things in France: one always must be aware of an active political component -- of the active involvement of government and the governors, in fact, and not just of the usual political process. In France, moreover -- not a small country -- the central government exerts a strong and direct control. An online bulletin board service physically located on a mountain - top in Haute - Savoie has much to be concerned about in the government debate and policy - making in Paris. That such central government policies have been flexible, enough to permit and in fact to promote much of the Digital Libraries activity described in what follows, does not suggest that French developments in this area have been any less centrally - controlled, or any less political. * The Bibliothe`que Publique d'Information / BPI -- general - purpose, central city, general public access Digital Libraries The Bibliothe`que Publique d'Information -- at the Centre Georges Pompidou in the center of Paris -- was founded in 1977, with a mandate to expand French library services in a non - traditional way. Its architecture alone was revolutionary. But even more revolutionary were its open access, overt appeal to the general public, and commitment from its beginnings to non - traditional information media. The BPI went online early, on the Minitel, at 3615BPI and on the Internet, at telnet://terminus.bpi.fr:2300 . Today it has an established online presence, linking its numerous services, on W3: at http://www.bpi.fr . The first thing which any user notices, on connecting to the Bibliothe`que Publique d'Information / BPI via its service on W3, is the inline image of the enormous, hi - tech - barn - like, very un - library - like interior of this now very popular Paris library. The second thing which a foreign user notices, however, is that an "English version" of the BPI's online access is available, the link for this tucked in immediately after the initial image. An American particularly notices this: one doesn't find "French" or really any non - American - English abilities appearing on American libraries' online services at all, much less as an initial feature. A first thought is that France, known so well for its jingoistic approach to language, seems to be an unlikely candidate for such linguistic flexibility, and yet there the link is, and choosing it leads to a very good rendering of the main library entry point, thus accessible to foreign English language users. A third thing noticeable initially, about the BPI online W3 service, is the variety of resources which it offers, all in addition to that which an online user normally seeks in consulting a library. A traditional library contains printed books and their bibliographic records: the initial entry point for most users is the catalog of these records. Yet the BPI features many other resources on its opening online screens. There is a general description of the BPI itself: how many library users have read books in a library for years without knowing much about the library itself? There are announcements, a calendar of events, lists of other libraries in France and elsewhere -- with live links to them -- BPI publications lists, and an online images database. Most of these resources and announcements have been presented by printed book libraries in the past, but in a service ancillary to their basic occupation of providing the books. These extra services were things posted on thumbtack - filled bulletin boards, at which users at best glanced as they waited for their books. One wonders whether with increased online usage the tables might be turned, and the "community bulletin board" library function will become more of a primary Digital Libraries activity, taking precedence over an increasingly - ancillary function of providing access to the old printed book collection? The BPI online library catalog, finally, also is available: the bibliographic records of the printed books and other documents in the collection. For this, by contrast to the BPI W3 page, a foreign user notices initially a _lack_ of non - French access. The screens obtained via the telnet link for the catalog do not resemble the screens obtained on the W3 service, or on other telnet - available library catalogs. There is a similar library - logic to the command structure which a user must follow to find an item: a familiar - sounding "TIT / title", "AUT / author", "A-T / author - title", etc., typology to follow. But it is clear that the exact procedures, and the format of the bibliographic records thereby obtained, are unique: perhaps to France, perhaps to this BPI institution alone. So, by contrast to the immense standardization of its initial W3 access -- so much of the WorldWideWeb appears to a user still to be standard, if only because of the continuing domination of the single Mosaic / Netscape browser -- the BPI catalog access, with its specialised vocabulary, command structure, and interface, appears positively eccentric to a foreign user. * INIST / the Institut National de l'Information Scientifique et Technique -- PASCAL / FRANCIS -- the stand - alone database Like the science establishments in other countries, the French scientific community was an early user of online digital information. Researchers attached to the giant Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique / CNRS have had access to most digital technology as it has developed and evolved, in France and elsewhere. Traditional library functions have been among those developed in French scientific online digital information. The Institut National de l'Information Scientifique et Technique / INIST was established in 1988 -- building upon a precursor which had been established in 1970 -- to coordinate these French science information activities. An initial view of the INIST W3 service shows the immense range of digital information and services which it provides online: descriptions of pan - European cooperative research projects in the sciences, thesis and general grey literature bibliography and publication, documentation collections (periodicals, scientific reports, conference proceedings), document delivery and translation and research services, newsletters and online conferencing. Among the various INIST projects has been the digitization of the large citation and abstract service provided since the second World War by the printed series "Bulletin Signale'tique", re - christened for its digital and online incarnation as PASCAL (sciences) and FRANCIS (humanities): these contain a combined total of over 13 million citations, with multi - lingual searching and abstracts. via W3 to http://www.inist.fr * Bibliothe`que municipale de Lyon -- a "local" French state library effort Other early leaders in the provision of Digital Libraries information in France have come from the ranks of the "bibliothe`ques municipales". This term, often mis - translated as "public library" in the US, in fact refers to very large research institutions and collections, located in most of the nation's major cities, which house some of the oldest and rarest books in the country, items which most certainly are _not_ provided in open access to the general public: a French bibliothe`que municipale is more like the New York Public Library than it is similar to normal public libraries in US cities. French bibliothe`ques municipales, moreover, benefit from national and international prestige, and French central government participation and direct financial support, which public libraries elsewhere lack. From its beginning in France, the Digital Libraries effort has seen the involvement of numerous bibliothe`ques municipales. That of Lyon, for example. As with other online Digital Libraries offerings, that of the Bibliothe`que municipale de Lyon strikes the user first with an image devoted to its monumental architecture. Unlike national efforts, in the French capital, the BM Lyon seems less - concerned with non - French - language access, and does not show the English - language option which, for example, the BPI does. The BM Lyon is just as concerned as is the BPI, however, to show users all the non - printed book resources which it has to offer: links to Lyon's remarkable Muse'e de l'Imprimerie et de la Banque, and to various online databases and fulltext publishing experiments, as well as to community announcements and detailed online exhibits of the library's varied special collections, rare books -- the BM Lyon's oldest book was given to a predecessor collection by Charlemagne -- new acquisitions and exhibitions, and modern and ancient documents of Lyon and its region. The BM Lyon online catalog, however -- like that of the BPI, also online via Minitel and telnet -- suffers from the same standardization drawbacks which confront the BPI online catalog, however. As with the BPI online catalog, the foreign user confronts a seemingly - familiar command structure which, however, retrieves records markedly unlike those found in similar online catalog efforts in Asia and the Americas and even in the rest of Europe. >From the great standardization of Mosaic / Netscape pointing - and - clicking, the BM Lyon Digital Libraries effort proceeds to a highly non - standard basic cataloging resource: non - standard, that is, to any user not familiar with Lyon or with basic French online cataloging technique -- which describes most of the potential BM Lyon Digital Libraries users on the Internet. via W3 to http://www.bm-lyon.fr , Minitel to 3615BMLYON , catalog via telnet to telnet://134.214.24.3 . (A full list of other French bibliothe`ques municipales which may be found online appears in the book's appendix.) In Part 2: FRANTEXT / ARTFL , the IRCAM / Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique - Musique, Minitel, the Ministry of Culture's work, and the BIBLIO-FR econference. XXX FYI France (sm)(tm) e - newsletter ISSN 1071 - 5916 * | FYI France (sm)(tm) is a monthly electronic newsletter, | 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 for FYIFrance), or via gopher to infolib.berkeley.edu 72 (path: 3. Electronic Journals (Library-Oriented)/ 6. FYIFrance/ , or http://www.univ-rennes1.fr/LISTES/biblio-fr@univ-rennes1.fr/ (BIBLIO-FR econference archive), or via telnet to a.cni.org , login brsuser (PACS / PACS-L econference archive), or at 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.