FYI France: "How to Digitize a Nation..."

I am certain that no one who is French or in France can be
reading this today. The football news of Sunday must have made
last night's Bastille Day celebrations the most memorable since
1789. French eyes everywhere this morning must be crossed, and /
or seeing some Hexagone version of Hunter S. Thompson's bats.
Franc,ais, franc,aises -- fe'licitations! 

But there is even more excellence in France these days than
football.  There are rumors of an economic recovery -- per Time
Magazine (?) -- even rumors of a political recovery: the
Pre'sident and the Prime Minister actually have been seen
competing for popularity, recently, in marked distinction to the
pronounced unpopularity which both enjoyed just a short time ago.

In the spirit of the hopeful resurgence of France and things
French, then, FYI France is pleased to announce a new feature,
"How to Digitize a Nation...", which debuts today at,

	http://www.fyifrance.com

or specifically, just for the feature itself, at,

	http://www.fyifrance.com/fy1280a.htm


The feature celebrates and analyzes recent French achievements in
digitization -- of libraries, of "l'Internet", of public access,
of texts and music and "multime'dia" -- and suggests that some of
the differences from the US experience which are developing in
France's digitization may be more typical of the rest of the
world than anything faced so far in Cupertino or along Leesburg
Pike. 

The feature also is an experiment in digital text presentation. 
Its basic structure follows that of an oral presentation made at
the recent American Library Association annual conference in
Washington DC. To that speech text notes and references and links
and eventually images are being added -- the perennial problem of
"versioning" will be addressed by "update dates", entered as each
alteration is made.

Most important, however, the new FYI France "How to Digitize a
Nation..." feature is designed to be used,

	1) both "hypertextually" and sequentially, for those who
	still prefer linear thinking to jumping around, and,

	2) both online and off- (i.e. printed, on paper), for
	those who still do not trust and / or just do not like
	the online media. 

The feature responds to several requests received for a
pedagogical device addressing digitization issues in France and
the non - anglophone world. For teaching, things still are best
if linear -- and in most places, still, paper works better than
online and better even than anything else digital. The new FYI
France "How to Digitize a Nation..." feature is designed, in
other words, to serve both the digital and the non - digital user
worlds. 

If it works, please tell me -- and if it does not, please tell me
that as well. In either case please tell me why: with permission
I even will publish the comments online. 


French readers / users once again should be assured that they and
their country are not being victimized but, rather, held up to
the rest of the world as a shining example -- both in this new
"How to Digitize a Nation..." feature and generally in FYI
France. 

A US citizen -- francophile or francophobe -- is as entitled to
understand and analyze a nation not her or his own as have been
the many acute French observers, Tocqueville among them, who have
taught the US so much about itself for so many years. 

"France and the French" really is not the subject here, however. 
The question here concerns, instead, "digitization" generally --
the "Internet", and all of digitization's other manifestations --
and whether these phenomena really will "scale up" easily or at
all to international applications, from their US origins. 

"France and the French" simply have been generous enough to offer
to the rest of us a leading, and at times shining, example, of
some of the very "non - US" problems which digitization faces in
France and Russia and Nigeria and Peru and China and Mozambique
and the rest of the non - anglophone / anglocentric world. 


Happy vacation to the French, and an eventual recovery from those
joyful football hangovers. See you again in September. 


				--oOo-- 


FYI France (sm)(tm) e-journal                   ISSN 1071 - 5916

      *
      |           FYI France (sm)(tm) is a monthly electronic journal,
      |           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
fyifrance), or http://www.cru.fr/listes/biblio-fr@cru.fr/ (BIBLIO-FR
econference archive), or at http://www.fyifrance.com , or at
http://listserv.uh.edu/archives/pacs-l.html . 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.

				--oOo--