FYI France: _Internet Digital Libraries_, "France" chapter, pt.2/4 (This is a continuation of the excerpt from _Internet Digital Libraries : The International Dimension_ -- its chapter on "France". Part 1 contained the chapter's general introduction, and its descriptions of the Bibliothe`que Publique d'Information, INIST, and the Bibliothe`que municipale de Lyon. Here 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 are described.) * FRANTEXT / ARTFL -- fulltext online digital information techniques One great logical conundrum of the Digital Libraries effort -- as yet unaddressed, let alone solved -- is whether and to what extent Digital Libraries will have to adapt traditional, pre - digitization, information - finding techniques, like the MARC / Machine Readable Cataloging formats, or will be able simply to ignore them and proceed directly to providing fulltext to the user online, rather than any bibliographic records which merely describe and represent them. "All this leads one to think that, in a short while, access to fulltext might render useless any new work on the MARC format," wonders the president of the French Conseil supe'rieur des bibliothe`ques, Michel Melot [2]. The French are forging ahead with both. The BPI and the BM Lyon (above) show examples of the traditional approach: imperfect perhaps, it can be observed, for their lack of standardization. But there also is French fulltext -- perhaps unhampered, perhaps not, by traditional bibliography as an intermediary -- to be found at: * FRANTEXT, digitized fulltexts assembled for the massive French dictionary effort -- TLF / Tre'sors de la Langue Franc,aise [3], by the Institut NAtional de la Langue Franc,aise / INALF -- nearly 2000 French full texts drawn from various centuries and disciplines. via W3 to http://www.ciril.fr/~mastina/FRANTEXT And then, in addition or perhaps instead, * ARTFL Project at the University of Chicago: the "project for American and french Research on the Treasury of the French Language", which includes the FRANTEXT fulltexts with a different search - engine than that used by FRANTEXT itself, along with many other French scholarly resources -- a Provenc,al poetry database, linguistic tools for FRANTEXT, a project to mount Diderot's Encyclope'die online, a number of ARTFL imaging projects, and links to others. via W3 to http://humanities.uchicago.edu/ARTFL.html As with the printed - book libraries -- the BPI and the BM Lyon -- one notices immediately questions of standardization and language: what standard will be used in providing online fulltext? what language -- whose, and which version of that? ARTFL even has seen it necessary to provide an entirely different search engine, presumably in some part to suit the different needs of its essentially - North American users. The question of multi - lingual access is answered by ARTFL, but not addressed by the French - language - only Frantext. * IRCAM / Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique - Musique / Institute for Research and Acoustic - Music Coordination -- online sound techniques Lest anyone forget, sound as well as text and images is being digitized and provided online actively by Digital Libraries. The IRCAM is part of the giant "Centre Pompidou" cultural complex in Paris, which also contains the BPI. Its online offerings include a music software users' group, music and sound software evaluations, bibliographic access to a library of books, music scores, recordings, and multimedia resources, and descriptions of projects such as "Le tunnel sous l'Atlantique", for "interactive music" between Paris and Montre'al. Like the other institutions of the Centre Pompidou, and of France generally, IRCAM presents its online information in English as well as in French, and it is very much a product of the French central, national, government: created in 1969 by the French President Georges Pompidou and the composer Pierre Boulez, and continuing under government ministry aegis. via W3 to http://www.ircam.fr * Minitel -- the online service: the organization and delivery of information Minitel is an integral part of the French Digital Libraries infrastructure, and it is one of the largest and earliest global providers of online digital information generally: earlier than the Internet by a decade. Today over 7 million Minitel terminals and several million more terminal - emulation hookups, worldwide, provide general public users access to nearly 25 million online digital information products and services, including hundreds of library resources. (A list of the Minitel "library" resources -- specifically so - called - - is provided in the Appendix. There are hundreds of other resources, however -- "documentation centers", "archives", "booksellers services", and thousands of general reference resources -- which also provide library service on the Minitel.) The Minitel was developed, during the late 1970's and early 1980's, by the national French telephone monopoly, France Te'le'com, as France's entry into the race for computerization / automation / informatisation. This is a race keenly felt by the French, surrounded as they are by European hi - tech competitors -- Spain, Italy, Switzerland, the UK, and above all Germany -- and over - shadowed as they feel themselves to be, in this and other fields, by "le de'fi ame'ricain" / the "American Challenge" posed by the US. An early Minitel application -- by no means ever the only one, and never intended to be the most important -- was the French national telephone book, which was loaded online onto Minitel at the same time as, unconfirmed marketing legend has it, the printed version became "very hard to obtain" for a while in France. Early developments included the growth of the infamous Minitel Rose, with its "sex - chat" and various sex services. Eventually, however, public sector and commercial service activity replace both the "annuaire" and "Minitel Rose" as the most important engines of Minitel's growth. Among the services rendered by the national government in mounting Minitel was the provision of universal access to general public users. The well - organized Minitel "kiosk" system also effectively subsidized the billing component, one of the largest and most difficult portions of any retail mail order or distribution operation, by allowing consumers to charge service usage to their normal telephone accounts. Less easy to see at the time, however -- certainly less easy to see then as a goal of public policy -- was the provision of Minitel as a basic, simplistic, but highly "user - friendly" service for general public online usage, anticipating the development of similar techniques for the Internet today. The relatively - primitive state of Minitel's "videotext" technology at the time was more than counter - balanced by the foresight of France Te'le'com and Minitel's creators in aiming the service at the "un - interested" general public user, at a time when the Internet was in use only by engineers. Now that the Internet at last is opening, its development of Mosaic / Netscape interfaces and hypertext / WorldWideWeb links, and general public - oriented commercial applications, represents a prime example of hi - tech "convergence", in this case of Internet technique with the original Minitel "general public" orientation and approach. via W3 to http://www.minitel.fr ; or via telnet to minitel.fr , or (in North America) via voice telephone to 1- 800 - MINITEL , or through any France Te'le'com office. * Ministry of Culture -- "French Culture, Inc.", online The French National Ministry of Culture is perhaps the best place to visit online to appreciate the "flexible centralization" which characterizes Digital Libraries efforts in France. Few countries anywhere even have a high - level "Ministry of Culture" (even fewer have one also devoted to its national language, as the official title "Ministry of Culture and Francophonie" indicates). This particular central government ministry not only has one of the most comprehensive and best - presented online presences itself, but it was an early leader in online work generally. The projects which the Ministry of Culture encourages and often directly supports include most of the library, museum, and archival experiments in digital media going on throughout the country. Most remarkable, for a government Ministry officially devoted to linguistic nationalism, the French Ministry of Culture itself offers online access to its resources and services in, of all things, the much - maligned "anglo - saxonne" language, English: few more dramatic proofs of the flexibility of the French, even in their intense centralization, might be provided than this -- even as "French Culture, Inc.", online, the supposedly - jingoistic French very pragmatically offer English. Even if the US had a Ministry of Culture, one somehow doubts that it would bother to translate all of its W3 homepage screens into French, into any other non - English language, or even into English English for that matter: "color" never would become "colour", "catalog" would not be "catalogue". French relative flexibility in language matters is a seldom - recognised thing. via W3 to http://www.culture.fr * BIBLIO-FR -- electronic conference discussions online, and their archives One new and virtually unrecognised resource of the global Digital Libraries effort is the well - run online electronic conference, and its invaluable archive. In an age when so much is being invented anew, very little exists yet in traditional media -- in print, on film -- which can inform a user about Digital Libraries. Online e - conferences, however -- when they are well - disciplined efforts, governed by special Listserve or List Processor software and a flexible but firm human moderator -- have been assembling enormous stores of accumulated knowledge and often wisdom about Digital Libraries efforts. Online archives of these e - conference discussions, which in some cases take place among thousands of individuals located in dozens of countries, are stored and searched easily. BIBLIO-FR, the French librarians' e - conference, was created in 1993 and since has grown to include membership and postings from most librarians and archivists in France who use digital media at all, substantive discussion of most Digital Libraries issues, enthusiastic participation by francophone librarians -- most francophile, a few francophobe -- located in various countries, and even an occasional posting by a French ambassador and by the Minister of Culture himself. There are few better starting or continuation points for any pursuit of French Digital Libraries knowledge than a free - of - charge subscription to BIBLIO-FR. BIBLIO-FR has not chosen, as have so many other French Digital Libraries resources, to make its discussions available in English - language translation. The BIBLIO-FR intent is, after all, to be a professional discussion group for librarians in France, and the primitive state of machine translation is such that the task of keeping up with the extemporaneous style and enormously - rapid growth of something like an e - conference discussion appears for now to be impossible. An e - conference might manage such an effort relying on volunteers, however: e - conference email communication is informal enough that subscribers simply might translate each other's postings. Two versions of both the BIBLIO-FR current postings and the archives are maintained: one with the French diacritical marks, which requires special software to be read at terminals, and one without. This is done to some extent to accommodate French users who simply don't possess the necessary software. To a greater extent, however, such accommodated users are non - French people online who have no other need for the software but still would like to read the messages. It is interesting that even BIBLIO-FR has tried its best to accommodate the outside, non - francophone world: multi - lingual e - conferences, and even mono - lingual e - conferences which go to this length to accommodate foreign users, still are a very rare thing online. Next month: Parts 3 & 4 of 4 -- The BNs de France and d'Art(?!), and some common themes in "Digital Libraries" work in France. XXX The book's full outline: Internet Digital Libraries: The International Dimension by Jack Kessler, kessler@well.sf.ca.us Part I: Setting the Stage Chapter 1: The Internet Goes Public -- A New Story, Digital Information Chapter 2: Digitization in Libraries -- An Old Story, Information and Libraries Chapter 3: Incunabula -- The Development of Digital Libraries in the US Part II: Specifics -- National Chapter 4: France -- Flexible Centralization Chapter 5: Singapore -- Rigid Centralization Chapter 6: China -- Chinese Uniqueness Chapter 7: India -- An Awakening Giant Chapter 8: Australia -- The Antipodes, and the Sheer Reach of Digital Information Chapter 9: Thailand -- The Blending of Worlds, Third and Other Chapter 10: The UK -- Crowded Pipes Chapter 11: Hungary -- Phenomenon of the Stranger Chapter 12: Japan -- Investing vs. Consuming Chapter 13: Indonesia -- The Rest of Asia, and the World Chapter 14: National Government -- the NSF Digital Libraries Projects, in the US Part III: Specifics -- International Chapter 15: Language Chapter 16: Politics and Political Structures Chapter 17: Technical Standards Chapter 18: Business Chapter 19: International Organizations Part IV. Generalities -- International Chapter 20: Media and Messages -- Is the Pipe Neutral? Chapter 21: Libraries and Information -- Warehouses and Services? Chapter 22: Human Users -- Fitting Something New In -- Wine and Bottles, Chickens and Eggs Appendix A: French Libraries Online -- the vast range of possibilities for Digital Libraries access overseas, including some not on the Internet but nonetheless Digital and accessible. Appendix B: Electronic Conferences in France -- professional development possibilities online -- the future for the Digital Library, in any country -- one national example. Appendix C: A Small Statistical Essai -- a "try" or "attempt" at not answering but at least asking a few general questions about the phenomenally - expanding international use of the Internet, based loosely on some brave statistics - gathering efforts which others have undertaken. Appendix D: Digital Libraries so - called -- some unsophisticated "content analysis". Glossary Annotated Bibliography and Resource List General Index ISBN 0-89006-875-5. Artech House is at telephone 1-800-225-9977, or, http://www.artech-house.com/artech/html/catalog/ book_html/0-89006-875-5.html?d8h3f9 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.