May 15, 2006 issue. This file presents an archive copy of the issue of the FYI France ejournal, ISSN 1071-5916, which was distributed via email on May 15, 2006.
Versions of the following have appeared online regularly, since 1992, as a feature of the FYI France ejournal, ISSN 1071-5916, which is distributed for free via email every month except August. Ejournal subscriptions may be obtained via email request to: kessler@well.sf.ca.us
Here this file is one of a number made available -- hopefully attractively, all in one place, and relevant to libraries and online digital information work in France and Europe -- as part of FYI France (sm)(tm), an online service to which anyone can subscribe for 12 months by postal mailing a check for US $45, payable to Jack Kessler, to PO Box 460668, San Francisco, California, USA 94146 (site licenses also are available): please write your email address on the front of your check. And you can pay via PayPal, on the FYI France homepage:
Please email suggestions for improvements to me at kessler@well.sf.ca.us
--oOo--
They say that the Bulletin des Bibliothèques de France, le BBF, was born on this day 50 years ago -- May 15, 1956 -- and a fête is under way today at the BnF in Paris to celebrate the event:
So, congratulations, vous tous! The BBF makes for great reading: good presentation, elegant format, fascinating subjects -- a star among library journals, and not just for the French.
I thought it might be interesting here to explore a few among the many, worldwide, who read the BBF regularly nowadays: among (per WorldCat) the subscribers --
[Europeans always have difficulty, in my experience, imagining a multi-cultural and particularly a multi-lingual "United States". Here, then, is a part of the USA which is both. Their main website in English even warns, in fact, "For a complete information about our campus, please visit our Spanish Version page. Most links in this page refer to the Spanish..."
Other places in the US which rapidly are becoming multi-cultural and multi-lingual include the entire state of Texas, most of our large US cities wherever they are located, and my own not-small state of Calfornia.
The BBF offers a glimpse to all of us, here, of the differences and complexities of the broad world outside of the narrowly anglophone one we once -- for a while, anyway -- had here in the US. It is a promising picture, especially for those of us at times not feeling comfortably part of that older tradition.
Founded in 1903, with 173 students, the University of Puerto Rico in its entirety now involves -- mostly in Spanish -- 5200 professors, 14,000 employees, and over 70,000 students...]
[Another BBF subscriber... also not English-medium...]
"The library also assists academic research, sponsors educational activities, promotes the professional development of librarianship, and carries out international exchange activities aimed at strengthening cooperation between domestic and foreign libraries. In addition, the library also supports the Center for Chinese Studies (CCS), which is devoted to the enrichment of resources for Sinological research.
"Over the years, the NCL has been forced to relocate several times due to political instability. The major dates in the library's development are chronicled below:
"When the NCL was first relocated to Taiwan, its collection consisted of only about 136,000 titles brought over from Nanjing. After more than 50 years of book acquisitions, the library's collection as of the end of 2003 was as follows:
| Chinese books | 1,289,039 |
| Western books | 461,198 |
| Japanese & Korean books | 134,084 |
| Rare books | 259,114 |
| ("Includes... string-bound editions...") | |
| Non-book materials | 882,413 |
| ("Includes Han dynasty histories, rubbings...) | |
| Databases | 260 |
| Total : | 3,026,108 |
| Periodicals | 20,897 |
| Newspapers | 408 |
[Yet another far-flung BBF set of readers -- this time literally at "The Antipodes", as the Aussies so proudly say, sometimes -- my granddad was an Aussie, and he spent a lifetime touring the wide world he thought he hadn't had "at 'ome down unda". Yet several times and in his old age he went back. He'd have had a better time of it if he'd been able to keep contact more easily: nowadays the Internet at least gives us that -- wandering Aussies in London check in at their library in Adelaide, wandering French scholars look up a reference at the BMLyon when they're in Perth, librarians in all three places read the BBF.
Among the libraries of the globe, those of the "antipodean" Australians are among the greatest beneficiaries of online digital communication: they're a long, long, way away, by plane or boat. Nowadays, though, more and more, they are connected to France and to other places, and France and other places are connected, daily and even continuously, to them...]
"Established in 1874, the University of Adelaide is the oldest of the three universities in the State of South Australia. The University is located in the central metropolitan area of Adelaide and has a student enrolment of approximately 14,000, with a relatively high proportion of postgraduate students. It covers a wide range of academic and professional disciplines, and has a strong research emphasis. The University and its libraries have successful co-operative relationships with many local institutions, including the Flinders University of South Australia, the University of South Australia, and professional, research, governmental and commercial organisations.
"The University of Adelaide Library comprises:
"The Waite Library and the Roseworthy Campus Library both support the research and teaching of the Faculty of Sciences and also provide library services to the staff of Primary Industries and Resources South Australia and the South Australian Research and Development Institute.
"The Barr Smith Library is the central library of the University and accommodates materials and services to support all faculties and departments not specifically served by the branch libraries. It has study seats for 1,300 persons, with an additional 700 study places in the branch libraries. Organisationally the Barr Smith Library supports the branch libraries with central services, including acquiring, cataloguing, and classifying new materials, purchasing supplies and equipment, collecting and recording management information, and developing and managing computing systems.
[And this is the newest challenge, to us all: a faraway place I've never been, as too many of us haven't, and yet a place we all ought to visit -- a home of magical thinking and incredible ideas, such as their "Truth & Reconciliation" commissions -- and a home of terrible problems, such as AIDS, which will redound to the discredit of the entire world if we neglect them, and will require the close cooperation of the entire world if they are to be addressed and resolved -- and a home of great achievements, and of genuine modern heroes, such as Nelson Mandela.
And they read the BBF... The "outside world" grows closer and closer together: for South Africa, for France, for all of us...]
"Welcome to a new generation university. An institution inspired by the greatest leader of the modern world. A people-centered nucleus of activity where innovation, creativity, technology and diversity thrive. An environment where excellence is the benchmark.
"Welcome to Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University!
"Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU), situated in Nelson Mandela Bay, opened on 1 January 2005, the result of a merger of the PE Technikon, the University of Port Elizabeth and the Port Elizabeth campus of Vista University
"To achieve our vision we must be characterised by:
"Having attained our vision we will be able to: Empower our users to be self-directed life-long learners; contribute to the development and enhancement of a knowledge-based society and play an important role in the sustainability development of our community.
"The Web Site of the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University Library & Information Services has primarily been created as a marketing tool. It aims to guide prospective visitors virtually through the libraries by way of photographs and text, to direct them to the different campuses via maps and to inform about the material and electronic collections to be located via the electronic catalogue.
"The NMMU LIS Web Site creates opportunities for its academic visitors to enhance their research projects by providing lists of Internet search engines as well as peer-reviewed scholarly publication and journal sites.
"The NMMU LIS provides not only a link to its own online Catalogue but also to catalogues of other South African tertiary institutions and specialised libraries.
"The seven campus libraries house close to half a million books as well as audiovisual material and journals."
[Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University has over 20,000 students, now... The South African literacy rate ("age 15 and over can read and write") recently has been 86.4% (male 87%, female 85.7%), and it has been getting better and better...]
All of the above represents a world much-changed, since the BBF began back in 1956: particularly in the eyes of those of us who personally remember 1950s education -- the Bad Old Days, back when "Blacks", pretty much anywhere, did not attend school at all or attended sub-standard schools, and even "Women" did not attend universities... in spite of myopic daily headlines which try to paint a different picture, the world has become a better place...
And all four of the very-varied list above now read the BBF!
Journals which "scale up" to the international & trans-national & globalizing world pull us all together.
So again, BBF, Happy Birthday!
Jack Kessler
--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 email address, and, b) it
// \\ isn't going to make them money: if it is going
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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 may be found at http://www.cru.fr/listes/biblio-fr@cru.fr/
(BIBLIO-FR archive), or http://listserv.uh.edu/archives/pacs-l.html
(PACS-L archive), or http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/Collections/FYIFrance/
or http://www.fyifrance.com . Suggestions, reactions, criticisms, praise,
and poison-pen letters all gratefully received at kessler@well.sf.ca.us .
Copyright 1992- , by Jack Kessler,
all rights reserved except as indicated above.
--hjlm--
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