FYI France: a (new) online library and information service This month's installment announces, FYI France (sm)(tm), an online library and information service at http://www.fyifrance.com . All of you have been at least patient and often enthusiastic readers of , some since its 1992 beginnings. This enewsletter will continue its normal monthly distribution, for as long as the French maintain their interest in online digital information, and as long as I have the strength to tap laptop keys. >From today as a test, however, and beginning officially on January 1, I am adding a WorldWideWeb / W3 - site to FYI France. My motivations basically are three: 1) to establish a one - stop - shopping W3 site for library and online digital information news in and about France, in English; 2) to try out the W3 medium for its graphics and links -- there will be plenty on -- in an application aimed specifically at busy professionals; 3) to try out the commercial use of the Internet by an online library epublishing and reference service -- this day appears to have arrived, for better or for worse, on both sides of the Atlantic. So what I have done on is to mount 12 inter - connected HTML files of text and attractive images, together with as many hypertext links and other references as I can gather and regularly maintain to online and other resources useful for "librarians, Internet and Minitel users, researchers, teachers, students, writers, book - lovers, book - dealers, publishers, and anyone interested in the Internet, libraries, France and Europe". On you will find lists of, and links to, and as often as I can pictures about: 1.00 FYI France: Print Libraries in France 2.00 FYI France: Digital Libraries in France 3.00 FYI France: E - Newsletter and Archive 4.00 FYI France: Publishers in France 5.00 FYI France: Book - Dealers in France 6.00 FYI France: Calendar 7.00 FYI France: Discussion and Debate 8.00 FYI France: La Francophonie 9.00 FYI France: Internet Training & Consulting 10.00 FYI France: Essai [couldn't resist this, but I _have_ buried it] 11.00 FYI France: Translation Services 12.00 FYI France: Bibliographies / Resource Lists Perhaps needless to say, any links which appear will be "live": you will be able to reach anything in which you are interested merely by "pointing and clicking", if there is a link. The process of maintaining will be additive: as you and others and I myself uncover interesting resources and active "links", I will add them to the service. There will be a charge for all of this. will be under development and so free - of - charge until January 1, 1997, after which a fee of US $45 will be charged for annual individual subscriptions: checks (only) payable to Jack Kessler, sent via postal mail to me at PO Box 460668, San Francisco, California, USA 94146 -- US currency only, please, and please write your email address on the front of your check. Those who subscribe now, before January 1, will obtain their first annual subscription, from January 1, for US $35. The day is past when full library service in the US was available for free, and it is passing fast in Europe. The State is not exactly withering away in these places, but its support for libraries is. Most libraries which I know, and I know a fair number, either have curtailed their services so much recently that "full library service" now is a misnomer, or they now are charging at least cost - recovery fees for many services previously free. So I would like to offer and experiment with, in , one possible model for online library reference service, epublishing, and archiving, which bears a commercial charge. I can make no guarantees as to the economics of this: please ask me in a few years. But I will be happy if I make the point that this sort of thing can be done -- by independent librarians and libraries, using very traditional tools of library and information service (reference, classification, etc.), and acting as professional "guides" in new and perhaps unfamiliar information "arenas" -- and if I cover my costs. My thought is that any information professional -- any librarian -- will be able to do what I am doing here, for their best / favorite subject area in online digital information. Very little of the raw material in the originates with me, although nearly all of its structure and presentation does: I was taught that mere "data" needs "intelligence" to become "information" -- it is this intelligence factor which is the information professional's "value - added", so much needed to turn today's Internet data into useful information. So please take a look. Please subscribe if you have the need or inclination. Above all please send me suggestions for improvements. The Internet has taken online digital information both public and international, in ways unanticipated by any of us, very recently and very quickly. I hope that will become a useful professional resource. I will be very happy if what I have done here offers a useful discussion point for partisans of librarianship, digital information, the Internet, the Minitel, France, Digital Libraries, whatever. And I am looking forward to writing about it, here and elsewhere, as it develops. Jack Kessler email: kessler@well.sf.ca.us http://www.fyifrance.com , for