Thursday, December 15, 2011

FYI France : L'Ardèche!

FYI France (since 1992) -- http://www.fyifrance.com
File 3: Ejournal & archive, by Jack Kessler, kessler@well.sf.ca.us -- archive copy of an issue of the FYI France ejournal, ISSN 1071-5916, distributed via email on December 15, 2011, and a little later here on http://fyifrance.blogspot.com, and at Facebook on Jack Kessler's Notes.

In south-central France, south of Lyon, the rivers empty from the Massif Central into the Rhône -- some of them after falling a long way, through impressive gorges and in tremendous floods. The result is some of the country's most spectacular scenery, best fishing, simultaneously the richest alluvial-deposit farming and the most hardscrabble clay & rock survival existences, and tiny and picturesque villages -- and some libraries, impressive too for also being tiny and impoverished-yet-surviving, in some places, and for possessing wonderfully-interesting collections and providing extensive local information services, in others.

Many accounts have been written of life in this part of France, many of them by foreigners: Robert Louis Stevenson on the Cévennes, Peter Mayle on the Vaucluse...

To better-appreciate the Ardèche I just now am reading an account by ebullient Yale History Professor John Merriman, of his love affair with the place, also of his keen appreciation of its history, its temperament, and of the ups and downs of living in France and of being French -- Merriman has lived there himself for many years, in Balazuc, population recently a few over 300 --

John Merriman, The Stones of Balazuc: A French Village in Time (W. W. Norton, 2002) 352 pages ; ISBN-10: 0393051137, ISBN-13: 978-0393051131

From the publisher's description:

"Experience village France with its historical dimension in place. In a spirited history, John Merriman allows us to see the presence of the past in the people and ways of this beautiful village in the Ardeche.

"Balazuc is a tiny medieval village carved into a limestone cliff that towers above the Ardeche River in southeastern France. Its dramatic landscape and Mediterranean climate make it a lovely destination for summer visitors, but for its residents over the centuries life in Balazuc has been harsh.

"At times Balazuc has prospered, most notably in the nineteenth century through the cultivation of 'the golden tree' and the silkworms it fed, a process whose rigors and rewards are gleefully detailed in this splendid book. But the rewards proved fleeting, leaving only the rigors of life on the 'tormented soil.'

"Historical events from the French Revolution, through the Paris Commune and the two world wars, sent ripples through this isolated region, but the continuities of everyday life remained strong. Twenty-eight men from Balazuc signed the list of grievances against the king in the spring of 1789; the families of nineteen still live in the village. This is a story of resilience."

And here are some of the libraries which these tiny towns, so remote from the superbly-endowed Parisian monstre to their far north, stubbornly and gamely and proudly support:

-- entries are listed below "in no particular order", as the search engines and I expect the always-suspicious neighbors would say;
-- population figures are via Wikipedia.fr, and they say the numbers are from 2008;
-- colors & links & character sets here are Zimbra's, my own & The WELL's new & very magical Open Source email genie, Siri's cousine, they work OK on Zimbra and in Gmail and I hope you can read and use them OK direct from your own email, but if not please let me know;
-- the following is not an exhaustive list, either, so if anyone please would point me to omissions via email to kessler@well.com I will add them;
-- aaand browsers and email programs vary greatly in the way they treat links, in the following -- for example Zimbra un-helpfully shows both the underlined and the non-, below here, as links, but then for some functions does not go past the #... -- so below I have included both, both the embedded link to the left and the full ASCII contents of that link to the right, in the hope that if the former ends up not being too helpful, at least you can copy & paste the latter into your own browser and get to where you are going easily that way -- the Ouebbe still is a work in progress --

* Voulte sur Rhône, Bibliothèque Municipale Lucie Aubrac, La -- 5,017 hab. -- http://www.fyifrance.com/fyi1pli4.htm#VoulteSurRhone

* Annonay, Bibliothèque Communautaire -- 17,156 hab. -- http://www.fyifrance.com/fyi1pli1.htm#Annonay

* Coucouron, Bibliothèque Municipale -- 827 hab. -- http://www.fyifrance.com/fyi1pli1.htm#CoucouronBM

* Saint Péray, Médiathèque -- 7,268 hab. -- http://www.fyifrance.com/fyi1pli4.htm#Peray

* Charmes sur Rhône, Bibliothèque -- 2,384 hab. -- http://www.fyifrance.com/fyi1pli1.htm#CharmesSurR

* Alboussière, Bibliothèque -- 907 hab. -- http://www.fyifrance.com/fyi1pli1.htm#Alboussiere

* Saint Julien Labrousse, Bibliothèque du Pays du Cheylard -- 336 hab. -- http://www.fyifrance.com/fyi1pli4.htm#SaintJulienLabrousse

* Saint Just d'Ardèche, Bibliothèque Municipale -- 1,535 hab. -- http://www.fyifrance.com/fyi1pli4.htm#SaintJustdArdeche

* Villeneuve de Berg, Bibliothèque Municipale -- 2,845 hab. -- http://www.fyifrance.com/fyi1pli4.htm#VilleneuvedeBerg

* Devesset, Bibliothèque Municipale -- 292 hab. -- http://www.fyifrance.com/fyi1pli1.htm#DevessetBM

* Lamastre, Bibliothèque Municipale -- 2,608 hab. -- http://www.fyifrance.com/fyi1pli2.htm#LamastreBM

* Teil, Le, Médiathèque -- 7,929 hab. -- http://www.fyifrance.com/fyi1pli4.htm#Teil

* Guilherand Granges, Bibliothèque Municipale -- 10,791 hab. -- http://www.fyifrance.com/fyi1pli2.htm#Guilherand

* Valgorge, Médiathèque Intercommunale -- 454 hab. -- http://www.fyifrance.com/fyi1pli4.htm#ValgorgeM

* Privas, Médiathèque Municipale -- 8,552 hab. -- http://www.fyifrance.com/fyi1pli3.htm#Privas

-- all of these entries are most easily reached as a single groupe ardèchoise via the initial list of "New" entries shown currently at,

http://www.fyifrance.com/fyi1plib.htm

-- and, later on, hopefully by the end of this month in fact, via a search in the New & Improved FYI France Search Engine, on either "Departement Ardeche" or "Département Ardèche"...

--oOo--

A Multilingualism Note:

Search has been ASCII-only for a long time, here on FYI France: partly as protest, ever since a certain Michael Hart & I, a long time ago, first discussed the politics of inserting little diacritical marks -- "comme c,a" -- as a salute to broad-minded US trans-nationalism, also to recognize foreign integrities, also to keep a few ferocious francophiles happy, also to remind US friends that the Nets were not yet multi-lingual much less multi-cultural.

That was back in the days when, in France anyway, an "airbag" had to be a "coussin gonflable de protection", or there would be a jail sentence... loi Toubon... which some of us at the time thought was funny and others among us did not...

Since then, though, Search has improved, the French président has shown up at Le Web, and now there is a new outfit down in Mountain View -- they're also now over on the rue de l'Opéra plus a few other locations worldwide -- which not only does Search pretty well but they do it pretty well multi-ling-ual-ly... In the remaining meantime, then, entschuldigen Sie bitte.


Jack Kessler, kessler@well.com

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

FYI France : Online music research revolutions, in France

FYI France (since 1992) -- http://www.fyifrance.com
File 3: Ejournal & archive, by Jack Kessler, kessler@well.sf.ca.us -- archive copy of an issue of the FYI France ejournal, ISSN 1071-5916, distributed via email on November 15, 2011, and a little later here on http://fyifrance.blogspot.com, and at Facebook on Jack Kessler's Notes.

I am having lots of fun using an iPhone to hear and watch and research Hélène Grimaud's wonderful playing of the piano -- she of the lycanthropic tendencies, yes, the extraordinary artiste who in her free time established and runs a wolf sanctuary, in of-all-places Westchester County -- and I was wondering about the current state of music librarianship and information, digital and other, in France these days.

For example Grimaud, originally of Aix-en-Provence, may be heard and seen and found-out-about everywhere, online now: she has a website, there are websites about her, there are publishers' websites, and fan-sites and performance-sites, and Facebook pages, Wikipedia articles in various languages, and plenty of interesting and sometimes very elegant performances available for enjoyable hearing and viewing via YouTube.

The "formation", though, was in France -- her initial "education" was there -- herewith, then, a few of the finest library sites for classical and other music which happen to be located within the Hexagone: only four, here, there are many hundreds -- thousands, if the "disco" and "sonore" and music book collections scattered across France, in bibliothèques and médiathèques and other collections, all get included -- some collections enormous and some tiny, but all vitally-important to any local beginner -- France treasures its music documentation...


* Paris, Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique et Musique / IRCAM, Médiathèque / Les Ressources, Centre Pompidou

    W3: http://ressources.ircam.fr/ (IRCAM, les ressources)
    W3: http://ressources.ircam.fr/?L=1 (in English)
    W3: (catalogue) http://ressources.ircam.fr/catalogue.html?
    W3: (catalogue) http://ressources.ircam.fr/catalogue.html?&L=1 (in English)
    W3: http://www.ircam.fr/ (IRCAM, l'IRCAM)
    W3: http://www.ircam.fr/?L=1 (in English)
    Minitel: (0)1.42.77.19.16
    GeoRef: 48|51|34.62|N,02|21|04.46|E
    Address: Centre Georges-Pompidou, 1 place Igor-Stravinsky, 75004 Paris
    t. (0)1.44.78.48.53

    "The IRCAM multimedia library is a resource center for contemporary music, science, and music and sound technologies. Boasting 35,000 documents, its collection grows in rhythm with the institute.s artistic season and research activities.

    "Created in 1996, the multimedia library is intended for a specialized population of students, instructors, researchers, scientists, musicians, professionals working in the domain of music, but also welcomes music lovers and those curious to learn more about artistic creation and sciences.

    "Books, scores, periodicals, theses, sound recordings, films, and program notes can either be consulted in situ in the reading room or borrowed (how to borrow materials). Our databases provide numerous musical and scientific resources online.

    "-- Our collection houses approximately 13,000 books on music from 1945 to the present (theory, aesthetics, composers, instrumental techniques), science and technology for music and sound (sound signal processing, instrumental acoustics, room acoustics, computer music technology, psychoacoustics). The ensemble is contextualized with the presence of works on history, philosophy, linguistics, and sociology.

    "-- Over 50 subscriptions to periodicals that cover the domains of musical creation, computer music, acoustics, perception, and technologies for sound.

    "-- Over 400 dissertations and theses in musicology and acoustics, signal processing and computer science applied to music.

    "-- Nearly 9,000 scores, essentially works from the 20th and 21st centuries, particularly works from the repertoire performed at IRCAM. Approximately 1,000 volumes of critiques from the Baroque to the modern period are also available.

    "-- Approximately 1,300 recordings dedicated to the music of the 20th century and today and 200 films (portraits of composers, documentaries, recordings of performances).

    "-- Databases accessible online from terminals in the reading room: the Grove (a dictionary of music and musicians), the RILM (International Repertory to Music Literature, from 1967 to present), the IIPA (International Index to Performing Arts), and the IIMP (International Index to Music Periodicals).

    "-- An information database on contemporary composers: Brahms. This database was entirely redone in 2007 and has been progressively brought up to date. It offers numerous biographies and catalogs of works (with detailed notices and program notes). Aesthetic texts written by musicologists relating the lives of the great figures of the music world from 1945 on. Detailed research modules on works and composers make very advanced searches possible. Users can search by orchestra size or musical genre, for example.

    "The IRCAM Archives

    "The multimedia library collects and conservers the sound and/or visual traces of events organized by IRCAM since its creation in 1977. The archives include over 1,200 concerts, other events (conferences, workshops, debates), and 800 program notes representing the institute's memory. This collection (the Archiprod database) is constantly added to with each new event. The complete sound archives are available only in the reading room at the multimedia library for copyright reasons. Three-minute long excerpts can be heard online. Program notes can be consulted in their entirety online.

    "Recently, IRCAM has developed an audiovisual activity based on the elaboration of works created at IRCAM (the series Images of a Work) or on the research carried out in the institute (notably the IRCAM Snapshots series). These films can be seen on the Resources portal and on Dailymotion.

    "Work by the IRCAM researchers (articles, reports, dissertations, contributions to a colloquium, etc.) are referenced in the Architexte database. This database functions according to the principle of open archives; the goal of which is to encourage the free dissemination of scientific publications.

    "Contemporary Music Portal

    "In 2007, IRCAM and other organizations with large collections in the domain of contemporary music came together to create a gateway. This gateway provides a common interface enabling users to peruse a number of catalogues and database, facilitating the localization of resources.

    "The founding partners of this project are the IRCAM multimedia library, the Cdmc, the Médiathèque Musicale Mahler, the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris, the Cité de la Musique, and the Ensemble intercontemporain. Twenty other institutions have joined the gateway since its inception."

    [http://ressources.ircam.fr/collection.html?L=1]

    Some history and description of the IRCAM: [verbatim from the website, see link below] --

    "IRCAM, the Institute for Research and Coordination Acoustic/Music, is one of the world's largest public research centers dedicated to both musical expression and scientific research. IRCAM is a unique location where artistic sensibilities collide with scientific and technological innovation. Frank Madlener has directed the institute since 2006. IRCAM's three principal activities - creation, research, transmission - are manifest in IRCAM's Parisian concert season, in the institute's annual festival, and in productions throughout France and abroad.

    "IRCAM is a major center of musical creation as well as being a production location and a unique residence for international composers. The institute's season is full of unique encounters with composers and artists from the contemporary stage and it supports contemporary composition with a commission policy. Numerous artist-in-residence programs result in the creation of multi-disciplinary projects (music, dance, video, theater and film). Finally, the institute's annual festival, AGORA, makes contemporary music creation available to the public.

    "In the realm of music and sound, IRCAM is on the cutting edge of scientific and technological innovations. Research, carried out in partnership with several universities and international companies, covers a broad spectrum of scientific disciplines including acoustics, signal processing, computer science (languages, real-time, databases, man-machine interfaces) musicology, and musical cognition. IRCAM's scientific findings are often applied to other artistic domains (multimedia, fine arts, or live performances) as well as to diverse fields in the industrial world such as cultural industries, telecommunications, computer science, and transportation and automotive.

    "IRCAM is also a center for computer-music education. The institute is a reference point for professional training thanks to its Cursus program and workshops carried out in collaboration with researchers and composers from different countries. IRCAM's educational activities also include the general public and the institute has developed interactive teaching software programs in collaboration with the French Ministry of Education and music conservatories. IRCAM also offers a university-level program in collaboration with the University Paris VI. This master's program, ATIAM, concentrates on signal processing and information technology applied to music.

    "Since 2006, the institute's artistic policy has become the guiding principle for the institute. A series of reforms has invigorated artistic creation and technology as well as their transmission to the public. The concert season has been reformed with numerous co-producers and with new aesthetics. The Performing Arts Technology team has been reformed by moving it from a laboratory to musical and performance stages. The Cursus Program has been reformed by extending it to a two-year program and by working with new partners. The documentation of musical works has been reformed so that the transmission and continuity are assured. The 'Compagnie IRCAM', a company that brings the IRCAM repertoire to stages in France and abroad has been created. Cultural outreach and an journal of the artistic creation carried out at the institute as well as other means of communication with the general public have also been put in place. These changes place IRCAM at the heart of a shared space.

    "Founded by Pierre Boulez, IRCAM is an institute under the aegis of the Centre Pompidou and the French Ministry of Culture. Since 1995, IRCAM and the CNRS have come together to form the mixed research laboratory (Sciences et technologies de la musique et du son - UMR 9912)."

    [http://www.ircam.fr/ircam.html?&L=1]


* Paris, Conservatoire national supérieur musique et danse de Paris, Médiathèque Hector Berlioz



* Conservatoire de Lyon

    W3: (médiathèque) http://www.conservatoire-lyon.fr/mediatheque.html
    W3: (catalogue) http://media.conservatoire-lyon.fr/opacwebaloes/index.aspx?IdPage=51
    W3: (conservatoire) http://www.conservatoire-lyon.fr/
    Address: 4 montée Cardinal Decourtray, 69005 Lyon
    t. (0)4.78.25.91.39
    Email: mediatheque@conservatoire-lyon.fr

    "The Library is open to all!

    "The Conservatoire de Lyon has a library of great wealth. It plays an important role in the curriculum of the students and is an essential educational tool for teachers. It is also an invaluable resource for musicians in general, amateurs and professionals, as well as researchers in musicology.

    "60% of the collections are made up of donations from musicians and patrons from Lyon (Ennemond Trillat -1890-1980-, Léon Vallas -1879-1956-, Henry de Chaponay, Ninon Vallin -1886-1961-, Henri Dumoulin, etc.) and are distributed in four main areas, library, disk library and the reserves.

    "In total, 73,000 items are available on loan or for on-site consultation.

    "The Library provides loan and consultation services. It proposes 45 000 music scores, 6 000 books and music encyclopaedias, and 2 000 periodicals. Nearly 15 000 music scores are available on loan. The library also has a treasured collection of instrumental and vocal scores of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

    "Borrowing is free for students and teachers of the Conservatoire.

    "The Disk Library provides a listening and reading room in which 10,300 CDs, 1,500 LPs, 50 DVDs and 500 books are made available.

    "This section has recently been enriched by several gifts and legacies of classical music and jazz music, the music critic Ferruccio Nuzzo, Lyon researcher and jazz record collector Yves-Alain Aimé Fournier (1945-2006), Roger Accart (1920-2007) founder and patron of "Musique du temps" and Anne-Marie Lamy, former professor of piano at the Conservatoire."

    [http://www.conservatoire-lyon.fr/mediatheque.html?lang=en]

    Some history and description of the conservatoire: [verbatim from the website, see link below] --

    "The Conservatoire de Lyon was founded in 1872 under the driving force of Mr. Mangin, the then orchestral conductor of the Grand Théâtre de Lyon.

    "Today classed as a Regional Conservatory, the Conservatoire de Lyon provides vocal, instrumental, dance and theatrical teaching to some 2,900 students and offers over 40 artistic disciplines. Two types of schooling are possible: a traditional program in addition to regular school hours or integrated in class timetables.

    "Relying on a teaching staff of 190, the Conservatoire aims to give everyone the artistic means and techniques to best achieve ones personal goals, whether that be, to master ones performance at an amateur level or to prepare a professional career. With a policy of decentralization in place for many years, it caters for a large number of children in the City of Lyon and its hinterland: each year 15 000 Lyon schoolchildren profit from an artistic initiation proposed by professors of the Conservatoire who intervene in their establishments.

    "Present in 7 arrondisements (adminstrative sections of the city), the Conservatoire promotes a policy of decentralization and proximity to the various sections of the city through, cultural centres, social centres, town halls, schools.

    "It is further intended to cater for young people who, having completed their course in a local school, wish to further their artistic studies.

    "An essential element of its teaching practice, in accordance with the guidelines laid down by the Ministry of Culture, is to train amateur dancers, musicians, and singers refining their talents. The Conservatoire therefore encourages a broad approach to the arts and gives great prominence to group projects. Many presentations contribute to these actions, thanks in part to a rich partnership with other cultural centres in the town, and with other comparable institutions in France and abroad."

    [http://www.conservatoire-lyon.fr/conservatoire.html?lang=en]



* Lyon, Conservatoire national supérieur musique et danse de Lyon, Médiathèque Nadia Boulanger

    W3: (médiathèque) http://www.cnsmd-lyon.fr/e.php?lsd=7&tc=5
    W3: (conservatoire) http://www.cnsmd-lyon.fr/
    Address: 3 quai Chauveau, 69266 Lyon
    Postal Address: C.P. 120, F-69266, Lyon cedex 09
    t. (0)4.72.19.26.26, fx. (0)4.72.19.26.00

    Some description of the médiathèque: [tr. JK]

    "The Médiathèque Nadia Boulanger of the Conservatoire national supérieur musique et danse de Lyon occupies beautiful space in what formerly was the library of the Ecole vétérinaire.

    "Established in 1980, the médiathèque at its origin held only the documents of the Nadia Boulanger Collection. Over only a quarter-century the collections have grown considerably: the médiathèque today manages nearly 80,000 documents using an online catalog accessible on the premises or at a distance via the Internet.

    "The Médiathèque Nadia Boulanger is a resource center both for the needs of music teaching and for the needs of research, it welcomes students, professors, musicologists, and researchers.

    "Some statistics --

    "Entire Collection:

    88,669 copies
    56,223 unique entries

    "of which, by number of copies :

    42,442 scores
    13,178 books
    9,225 sound documents
    370 videos
    digital resources (Internet sites and CD-ROMs)

    "Available for lending: 45,447 copies

    29,946 scores
    6,822 books about music
    1,584 books about dance, painting, sculpture, etc.
    4,919 compact-disks
    269 Internet sites internet searchable by keywords of the title, author, or subject

    "Available for reading on the premises: over 26,000 documents

    "with a capacity of 32 places, the reading room provides access to three major sections:

    the fonds Nadia Boulanger
    the éditions monumentales
    the reference works

    "Commercial databases -- Grove music online, RISM, RILM, RIPM, JSTOR... -- are available for consultation on the premises.

    "Periodicals Room: 189 titles

    130 music periodicals currently-subscribed, for consultation on the premises.
    59 music periodicals collections, no longer published, also are preserved.

    [http://www.cnsmd-lyon.fr/e.php?lsd=7&tc=5&lang=]

    Some history and description of the conservatoire: [tr. JK]

    "The Conservatoire national supérieur musique et danse de Lyon was established in 1980.

    "Administered by the Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, the CNSMD de Lyon is an 'établissement public à caractère administratif'. It is managed by a conseil d'administration, the president of which is named by the Ministère. The establishment is the responsibility of the directeur du conservatoire assisted by a directeur-adjoint à compétence administrative, a directeur des études musicales, a directeur des études chorégraphiques and a conseil d'orientation pédagogique.

    "The teaching staff consists of 180 professors, assistants, and accompagnateurs. The administrative and technical staff is composed of 65 persons. Current students include 500 musicians and 80 dancers. Foreign students are 15% of the current total.

    "A public season of nearly 300 performances is an integral part of the teaching program, and allows the school to enrich the talent and the work of its students, professors and invited artists. The partners of the Conservatoire provide the students with professional opportunities. The CNSMD de Lyon is a member of a network of over 40 establishments of higher learning participating in the Socrates / Erasmus system of exchanges, and it also is expanding its projects with institutions outside of Europe. It benefits, for these projects and those of its students, from the contributions of SACEM, ADAMI, SPEDIDAM and the Mécénat Musical Société Générale."

    [http://www.cnsmd-lyon.fr/e.php?lsd=3x12&tc=5&lang=]



So, a great deal is going on in France, digitally and otherwise, regarding music: I am particularly interested, for example, in IRCAM's "Contemporary Music Portal -- In 2007, IRCAM and other organizations with large collections in the domain of contemporary music came together to create a gateway..." --


    * Contemporary Music Portal

    "The contemporary music portal is a search engine for art music resources from 1945 to this day held by French institutions. 209390 biographies, books, music scores, sound recordings, videos. available in 32 databases..."

    [http://www.musiquecontemporaine.fr/]


-- modern music and music research being, like modern engineering and mathematics and medical care and corporate management and seemingly everything else, a cooperative venture, "team"-and-"teamwork"-oriented... This to me is a strange thing, so much so that someone like me raised in an era of Individual Effort -- Horowitz striding out solo upon the stage, all eyes and ears on only him -- feels lost, sometimes, in this era in which everything apparently gets "Shared", or "Liked" or "Friended" or "Linked by Popularity" and so on. So as music becomes a teamwork thing too, perhaps, I will be very interested if still sceptical to learn about its "gateways" and "coming togethers".

But I was thinking initially, here, of a specific performer: my point being that Grimaud the artiste is online -- and to me the question this suggests is whether music institutions such as the above are online too, or are so sufficiently, yet. As with any activity, nowadays, commercial or governmental or any other, if the practitioners and patients and citizens and customers are out there now, out in the cloud and on their mobiles and wherever, how quick to follow will be institutions which train and promote and cater to them, or how slow? And how quick or how slow ought they to be?

Grimaud's initial education took place in France, as I said. Her education since, however, and certainly her practice now of her "profession", and her current "means of distribution", have been and are emphatically global, as she and so many performers have become expert in their use of digital media for music, for performance & production & distribution, discussion, education, research, so many other purposes.

These last are a function, too, of both performer and recorder, as observers since at least Barthes have pointed out: Grimaud has mastered the art of digital media interviews, it seems -- that direct wolf-like gaze into the camera, the sheer intensity of the communication and playing and recording and verbal explanation -- her fans too, though, unlike Lady Gaga's so far although hers as well, are adept at video & audio & editing, a great deal of fascinating presentation and discussion of Grimaud's art online is authored now not by her but by her listeners.

The YouTube result, to give just one example, is a wonderful chance to tour through the entire and ongoing life of this impressive artist: one may find there now full Grimaud performances of the Rach2 and other "greats", with good quality sound if you use the earbuds, backed up with online music scores nearly-instantly available via Wikipedia -- try External Links at the bottom of the articles there, several online places now mount massive varieties of classical music scores online -- also images and maps and texts related to Mozart and Bach and Cöthen and wolves and ashtanga yoga -- all of great help to anyone trying to follow the flying fingers of a Grimaud, or a Horowitz, or a Hilary Hahn.

Classical music perhaps is less for the initiated, today, as is so often said. Perhaps as well, though, as in so many areas, digital access and technique are creating a new generation of initiates now. Just as the salon gave way to the concert hall and the "general admission ticket", so now an artist such as Grimaud may have a performance life online, one similar in some ways to that which preceded it but one also very different.


--oOo--


Note:

For those of us with a great love of music, and an interest in libraries and digital information -- all those databases, all those indexes, and lists, and classifications!... mouth-watering... -- also with any tendency at all to be obsessive-compulsive, here is a weekend project:

If you ever have wanted to put all your Bach into-order by BWV number, to compare or simply enjoy the differences among versions of the same piece on a new recording by Grimaud, a treasured Horowitz, Hahn's amazing fiddle, Dogsounds' Moog... while you are in France, or on Kamchatka, or off the coast of Fukushima taking radiation-readings, or up in Rocinha fleeing bulldozers, or out in Kashgar building railroads, wherever you happen to be... and when-ever, too, as in The Matrix time-zones and national holidays present no barriers...

On iTunes you can make a playlist for each Bnumber and Knumber and so on, sorted automatically by the system, viz.,

B988 Jaccottet
B988 YoYoMa
B1006 Grimaud
B1006 Hahn
B1007 Casals
B1007 YoYoMa
K488 Curzon/LSO
K488 Grimaud
K488 Horowitz

-- then sync that to a music-enabled mobile -- iPhones, and et alia if & when iTunes will do that -- and then compare-&-contrast away!

Obtaining the music itself nowadays is no problem either, if your Kashgar wi-fi connection is good: just download from iTunes, the way everybody else does worldwide now. And the Kashgar local-income-relative prices for all of this, for the music & wifi & iPhone, will be dropping spectacularly, don't worry, from various global factors including Greek bond rates & euro parities & rmb revaluations.


Jack Kessler, kessler@well.com

Saturday, October 15, 2011

FYI France: Recent books, and digital bibliography, in France

Some interesting new books, plus a note on Adventures in Online Bibliography, Globalized Version:
[Forthcoming, English edition -- the French edition is described below]

* Johnson, Alex. Bookshelf (Thames & Hudson, February 1, 2012) ISBN-10: 0500516146, ISBN-13: 978-0500516140 ; Hardcover ; 272 pages.

Publisher's description: [tr. JK from the French edition]

"What's new in our bookshelves? The fact that today one can store the entire contents of one's 'library' in an electronic gadget the size and weight of a pocketbook is a revolution. But the change nowadays takes multiple forms. Along with the digital revolution, one sees as well -- paradoxically -- an explosion of creativity in the design of bookshelves, as if the necessities of combating the virtual creates the wish for real-life containers for these objects of desire which are books.

"Bookshelves no longer are simple shelf-spaces on which we arrange the books. If the form of bookshelves has remained relatively unchanged over the centuries, for several years designers have shown how they nevertheless may take on a variety of inventive possibilities. All the forms, all the daring, and all the eccentricities possible are permitted, today.

"This work, in reporting on 224 designs, emphasizes the extreme diversity of the modern institution. From the tiny bookshelf to the sculpture-bedecked library encompassing an entire room, from the mobile library to the bookshelf which transforms into a table or a chair, including the wheelbarrow-library, the sofa-library, the rolling-library, the cow-shaped-library, there is something for everyone here.

"Some particularly-original creations transform the modest bookshelf into a decorative piece, even a work of art. Inversely, libraries today are inspirations for artists. The library has become a modern work of art, a place for daring experiments in technique and, as a consequence, the reflection of the artistic tastes of its owner. The desire to exploit a space to its maximum is one of the factors which explains the current vogue for modular and multi-functional furniture. Arranging the books amid cushions and canapés, many designers today give the bookshelf a double function -- the Japanese designer Sakura Adachi for example has created a formidable space-saving bookshelf which in a fraction of a second can become a table for two. At the same time, the bookshelf is becoming more and more mobile, witness for example the bookshelf in the form of a wheel of Michael Bihain, which allows one to transport books throughout the house.

"The creations presented in this work are all in a way paying homage to the book. Ingenious and practical as well as original, they place the book at the heart of our daily life -- often in unexpected ways. They are a source of inspiration for all of us who love books, as they are for booksellers thinking of reinventing their spaces."

See,

http://theblogonthebookshelf.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/bookshelvesbook



[Forthcoming, French edition -- the English edition is described above]

* Johnson, Alex. 224 Bibliotheques Design (Thames & Hudson, 16 février 2012) Collection : BX Livres ; Langue : Français ; ISBN-10: 2878113837, ISBN-13: 978-2878113839.
Amazon.fr:
Prix conseillé EUR 25,00
Prix EUR 23,75 livraison gratuite

Présentation de l'éditeur

Quoi de neuf dans nos bibliothèques ? Le fait qu'on puisse aujourd'hui faire rentrer tout le contenu de sa "bibliothèque" dans un appareil électronique de la taille et du poids d'un livre de poche est une révolution. Mais le changement prend aujourd'hui de multiples formes. Parallèlement à la révolution numérique, on assiste aussi - paradoxalement - à une explosion de créativité dans le design des bibliothèques, comme si la nécessité de lutter contre le virtuel passait par l'envie de créer de véritables écrins pour ces objets de désir que sont les livres.

Les bibliothèques ne sont plus de simples étagères sur lesquelles ranger ses livres. Si la forme des bibliothèques est restée relativement inchangée pendant des siècles, depuis quelques années, les designers se sont rendus compte qu'elle se prête à de multiples possibilités d'invention. Toutes les formes, toutes les audaces et toutes les excentricités sont aujourd'hui permises. Cet ouvrage, en répertoriant 224 bibliothèques design, souligne ainsi l'extrême diversité des bibliothèques actuelles. De l'étagère extra small à la bibliothèque sculpturale qui recouvre toute une pièce, de la bibliothèque nomade à l'étagère qui se transforme en table ou en chaise, en passant par la bibliothèque-brouette, la bibliothèque-fauteuil, la bibliothèque roulante ou la bibliothèque en forme de vache, il y en a aujourd'hui pour tous les goûts.

Certaines créations particulièrement originales transforment la modeste étagère en élément de décoration à part entière, et même en œuvre d'art. Inversement, les bibliothèques sont aujourd'hui pour les artistes source d'inspiration. La bibliothèque devient une œuvre d'art moderne, le lieu d'expérimentations techniques audacieuses et, par conséquent, le reflet des goûts artistiques de son propriétaire. Le désir d'exploiter l'espace au maximum est l'un des facteurs qui expliquent la vogue actuelle des meubles modulaires et multifonctions.

En aménageant des rayonnages à l'intérieur même des fauteuils ou des canapés, beaucoup de designers assignent aujourd'hui à la bibliothèque une double fonction - le designer japonais Sakura Adachi a ainsi créé une formidable bibliothèque gain de place qui en une fraction de seconde se transforme en table pour deux personnes.

Parallèlement, la bibliothèque devient de plus en plus mobile, comme en témoigne par exemple la bibliothèque en forme de roue de Michael Bihain qui permet de transporter ses livres partout à travers la maison. Les créations présentées dans cet ouvrage sont toutes à leur manière un hommage au livre. Aussi ingénieuses et pratiques qu'originales, elles placent le livre au cœur de notre vie quotidienne - parfois de façon très inattendue. Elles sont une source d'inspiration indispensable pour tous les amateurs de livres - ainsi que pour les libraires ayant envie de réinventer leur espace.

Biographie de l'auteur

Alex Johnson est journaliste freelance pour la version en ligne du journal The Independent. Il tient depuis 2007 un blog de design - Bookshelf - consacré aux bibliothèques. Il est l'auteur de Shedworking: The Alternative Workplace Revolution.

-- and see also, several other new items --

* Papy, Fabrice, ed. Évolutions sociotechniques des bibliothèques numériques (Paris : Hermès science publications-Lavoisier, 2011) 1 vol. (206 p.) : ill. ; 24 cm l Collection : Traité des sciences et techniques de l'information. Série environnements et services numériques d'information, ISSN 2104-709X ; Sujet(s) : Bibliothèques virtuelles, Bibliothéconomie -- Innovations -- Aspect social, Recherche documentaire automatisée ; Indice(s) Dewey : 027.002 85 (22e éd.) ; ISBN 978-2-7462-3145-0 (br.) : 65 EUR ; EAN 9782746231450 ; FRBNF42407257.

* France. Service du livre et de la lecture. Concevoir et construire une bibliothèque : du projet à la réalisation / Ministère de la culture et de la communication, Direction générale des médias et des industries culturelles, Service du livre et de la lecture ; sous la direction de Laure Collignon et Colette Gravier ; préface de Nicolas Georges,... (Paris : Éd. "Le Moniteur", DL 2011) 1 vol. (339 p.) : ill. en noir et en coul., plans, couv. ill. en coul. ; 25 cm ; Sujet(s) : Bibliothèques publiques -- Conception et construction -- Guides, manuels, etc., Bibliothèques publiques -- Planification -- Guides, manuels, etc., Bibliothèques (édifices ) -- 1990-.... ; Indice(s) Dewey : 022.3 (22e éd.) ; 727.8 (22e éd.) ; ISBN 978-2-281-11501-7 (rel.) : 75 EUR ; EAN 9782281115017 ; Notice n° : FRBNF42408525.

* Bélisle, Claire, éd. Lire dans un monde numérique : état de l'art (Villeurbanne : Presses de l'ENSSIB, 2011) 1 vol. (295 p.) ; 23 cm ; Collection : Papiers, ISSN 2114-6551 ; Note(s) : Bibliogr. p. 293-294. Notes bibliogr. Webliogr. p. 295. - ENSSIB = École nationale supérieure des sciences de l'information et des bibliothèques ; Sujet(s) : Lecture sur écran ; Indice(s) Dewey : 028.028 5 (22e éd.) ; ISBN 978-2-910227-85-2 (br.) : 39 EUR ; EAN 9782910227852 ; Notice n° : FRBNF42424065.

* Grivel, Luc, éd. La recherche d'information en contexte : outils et usages applicatifs (Paris : Hermès science publications : Lavoisier, 2011) 1 vol. (279 p.) : graph., ill. ; 24 cm ; Collection : Traité des sciences et techniques de l'information. Série Environnements et services numériques d'information, ISSN 2104-709X ; Sujet(s) : Recherche de l'information, Informatique documentaire, Systèmes d'information ; Indice(s) Dewey : 025.04 (22e éd.) ; ISBN 978-2-7462-2581-7 (br.) : 89 EUR ; EAN 9782746225817 ; Notice n° : FRBNF42423352.

* Evans, Christophe, éd. Lectures et lecteurs à l'heure d'Internet : livre, presse, bibliothèques (Paris : Éd. du Cercle de la librairie, 2011) 1 vol. (255 p.) : ill., graph. ; 24 cm ; Collection : Bibliothèques, ISSN 0184-0886 ; Sujet(s) : Bibliothèques et Internet -- Aspect social -- France -- 1990-.... , Livres et lecture -- Ressources Internet -- France -- 1990-.... , Médias numériques -- Aspect social -- France -- 1990-.... ; Indice(s) Dewey : 028.028 54678 (22e éd.) ; ISBN 978-2-7654-1000-3 (br.) : 40 EUR ; EAN 9782765410003 ; Notice n° : FRBNF42437780.

* Horizon 2019 : bibliothèques en prospective : colloque [Villeurbanne, ENSSIB, École nationale supérieure des sciences de l'information et des bibliothèques, 19-21 novembre 2009] / Dominique Arot, Anne-Marie Bertrand, Robert Damien... [et al.] (Villeurbanne : Presses de l'ENSSIB, 2011) 1 vol. (111 p.) ; 23 cm ; Collection : Papiers. Série Généalogies, ISSN 2111-0212 ; Lien à la collection : Papiers. Série Généalogies, Papiers (Presses de l'ENSSIB) ; Sujet(s) : Bibliothèques publiques -- 1990-.... -- Congrès, Bibliothèques publiques -- Finalités -- Congrès, Bibliothéconomie -- Innovations -- Congrès ; Indice(s) Dewey : 027.4 (22e éd.) ; ISBN 978-2-910227-87-6 (br.) : 22 EUR ; EAN 9782910227876 ; Notice n° : FRBNF42442736.

* Huet, Jérôme ; Dreyer, Emmanuel. Droit de la communication numérique (Paris : LGDJ-Lextenso éd., 2011) 1 vol. (376 p.) ; 20 cm ; Collection : Manuel, ISSN 0990-3909 ; Sujet(s) : Internet -- Droit -- France, Multimédias -- Droit -- France ; Indice(s) Dewey : 343.440 9944 (22e éd.) ; ISBN 978-2-275-03490-4 (br.) : 39 EUR ; EAN 9782275034904 ; Notice n° : FRBNF42517550.

* Peyré, Yves. La Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève : à travers les siècles ([Paris] : Gallimard, DL 2011) 1 vol. (127 p. dont 7 p. de pl.) : ill. en noir et en coul., couv. ill. en coul. ; 18 cm ; Collection : Découvertes Gallimard : histoire ; 572 ; Note(s) : En appendice, choix de textes et documents. - Bibliogr. p. 120-121. Webliogr. p. 121. Index ; Sujet(s) : Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève (Paris ) -- Histoire ; Indice(s) Dewey : 027.044 361 (22e éd.) ; ISBN 978-2-07-013241-6 (br.) : 13,20 EUR ; EAN 9782070132416 ; Notice n° : FRBNF42452840.


--oOo--



And now, a Note:

* Adventures in Online Bibliography, Globalized Version (1) :

Suppose you find, nowadays, perusing whatever source, online or off, the following interesting-looking title -- I found it interesting-looking, anyway, occasionally I browse through Amazon.fr under "bibliothèques" just to see what's new --

"Archives, bibliothèques, musées"

-- sitting in California, though, currently there is a disadvantage -- for from here anyway you then encounter the following note,

"Nous sommes désolé, nous n'avons pas pu finaliser votre achat."

"Votre compte Kindle est enregistré sur Amazon.com. Pour acheter des titres Kindle disponibles pour votre pays, achetez sur Amazon.com."

-- I've never been certain how to translate "Nous sommes désolé" -- "We are disappointed, devastated, abandoned on an island in the middle of the sea, etc." -- because the person / people saying it are not feeling that, really, nor are they feeling, simply, "sorry" -- in this instance, though, it's at least a little more than "disappointed", as these are commercial folks, in France, and they know they may have lost a sale here -- I don't know whether or how Amazon apportions their referrals internally, as to amazon.fr versus amazon.com, but I expect the former doesn't get much from a sale consummated at the latter location.

France can't sell this thing to me -- even amazon.fr -- for all sorts of French reasons plus some reasons which are US-based. There is the matter of freight charges, for example: prohibitive, for any little book sent from France to a place so far away as California, as most of us have had to learn from bitter experience -- also prohibitive the impossible task of explaining said exorbitant freight charges to the newbie customer, which I suppose the Amazon folks in Paris do not want to have to do for each foreigner.

The credit card, too, particularly in these days of Currency Crises and Banking Bailoutsi: every formal reassurance I receive that my credit cards and PayPal and other financial arrangements now are fully and seamlessly globalized -- such that I can board the plane in one place, de-plane in another far away, and notice no alteration whatsoever in my ATM procedures, credit card arrangements, WiFi access, Internet charges, rollover and long distance minutes, and the rest -- turns out to be bogus in practice, for when I get there the thing never works and even less-so when I try it online -- still, it seems, for France and elsewhere too, the only strategy which really does work seamlessly "internationally" is the printed letter of introduction from my banker to the banker there, and setting up something with the latter while sitting before him in the flesh in his own office, on his home turf, and following his bank examiner's rules, and paying his bank fees... so much for globalization so far, theory as vs. practice...

But here's the rub, on this little book-purchase -- this week, anyway, as these things do change -- with a mouse-click I went from "amazon.fr" to "amazon.com" and there, magically as all these digital online globalization things are, was the exact item I had been trying to purchase from the guy in France, where I just had been told, "Nous sommes désolé..."

Who is fooling whom, here? Is it the Americans fooling the French, or the French the Americans? Is it the globalization people fooling the bank examiners in both places? What about copyright -- this one happens to be public domain, but still -- and the loi Lang and publishers' agreements and so on? If all one need do, confronting whatever national regulation or economic policy prohibits a "foreign" sale of this thing, is click and *presto* buy it elsewhere, then perhaps globalization really has succeeded, and really can "leap tall buildings in a single bound" as-advertised, and perhaps regulation & policy count for nothing, any more, at least trans-nationally.

Or maybe it's just that "amazon.fr" didn't want to confess to me how much the freight from them would cost? I doubt that, salesmen always are hungry for a sale.

Anyway, here is the item, the BnF entry for it: I wonder whether someone in Limoges wishing to purchase it from amazon.com will encounter a "We are devastated..." referral to amazon.fr instead? Fascinating stuff.

Type : texte imprimé, monographie
Auteur(s) : Réau, Louis (1881-1961)
Titre(s) : Archives, bibliothèques, musées [Document électronique] / Louis Réau
Type de ressource électronique : Données textuelles (101 Ko)
Publication : 1997
Note(s) : Document numérisé en mode texte
Reproduction : Num. BNF de l'éd. de : Paris : INALF, 1961- (Frantext ; P746Reprod. de l'éd. de : Paris : L. Cerf, 1909 (in-8)
Sujet(s) : Bibliothéconomie
Notice n° : FRBNF37303784
1 Poste d'accès aux ressources électroniques NUMM- 89433 support : texte numérisé
http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb37303784c/PUBLIC



* Adventures in Online Bibliography, Globalized Version (2) :

And here, again plaintively, is the similar procedure now for obtaining ironically one of the great classics of French or any other librarianship -- read it on your Kindle, on the other side of the planet -- paraphrasing the famous ad for J.S. Bach's Mood Synthesizer, "If Naudé were alive today he'd own an iPhone 4s..."

-- "amazon.fr" says,

Advis pour dresser une bibliothèque : présenté à monseigneur le président de Mesme de G. Naudé (Kindle Edition - 30 septembre 2011) - Ebook Kindle

"Ce titre n'est pas disponible pour votre pays."

-- but then, a mere click away, "amazon.com" offers,

Advis pour dresser une bibliothèque : présenté à monseigneur le président de Mesme (French Edition) [Kindle Edition]
G. Naudé (Author)

Format: Kindle Edition
File Size: 109 KB
Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
Language: French
ASIN: B005R78C38
Lending: Enabled
Average Customer Review: Be the first to review this item
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #30,707 Free in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Free in Kindle Store)
Would you like to give feedback on images or tell us about a lower price?



The world grows more and more strange, globalized & digitized & virtualized as it is becoming.



Jack Kessler, kessler@well.com

Thursday, September 15, 2011

FYI France : Project Gutenberg and the passing of Michael Hart

September saw the death of one of the unlikely triumvirate who have done perhaps the most to envisage and engineer our transition from print to digital text: Michael S. Hart, doyen, founder of Project Gutenberg which now operates at 36,000+ free-etexts-strong -- disparu September 6 at age 64.

As for the other two -- the creative corporate maelstrom involving Larry Page & Sergey Brin & two sisters named Wojcicki & the Stanford Digital Library Technologies Project & Marissa Mayer's stopwatch, & called "Google" or the "Books" part of that anyway --

http://books.google.com/intl/en/googlebooks/history.html

-- and Amazon.com's amazing Jeff Bezos -- well, both of those other two still are very much alive and thriving and busy building their respective World's Largest Libraries Of Digital Texts So Far. And I earnestly hope Project Gutenberg will persevere now, too, in spite of its loss -- along with the massive efforts of HathiTrust, and Gallica, and the millions of other digital text repositories all blossoming now... sprouting on every institutional hard drive, and soon surging forth on or via every individual's mobile...

Michael personally, though, will be missed. His refreshing naïveté -- every effort needs one pioneer, at least, who believes fervently in a world without money -- Hart's particular vision balanced the more worldly realisms of the other two undertakings well. Every pioneering effort needs a variety of flavors, and online digital text has benefited greatly from his.

What follows below here, then, is an excellent and interesting eulogy of Michael by Hervé Le Crosnier, translated by me from the latter's elegant French which also is included -- online digital text has been a trans-national and cross-cultural effort, as Hervé's observations here and his own long involvement in all of this both attest --

[* version en américain, see version in french below]

"Project Gutenberg is Orphaned: the death of Michael Hart"

by Hervé Le Crosnier, translation by Jack Kessler

Michael Hart died on September 6 at the age of 64. He will hold his place in the history of digital culture as the founder of Project Gutenberg, a major cooperative undertaking dating from the beginnings of the Internet, which created a gigantic database of digitized books made available to users on a shared basis.

It was forty years ago, in July 1971, that the young Michael Hart received his pass for shared-time use of the Xerox computer at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana campus. With just a normal math background, Hart wondered what he might usefully accomplish using such a tool, one at that point limited to a single all-capitals character set and very slow by comparison to today's computers.

He used his time to make a copy of the US Declaration of Independence, all the while dreaming the dreams of universal bibliography launched by the founding-fathers of digital information such as Vannevar Bush, Joseph Licklider and Ted Nelson. The file which resulted was only 5kb -- but he was forced to abandon his original idea of sending the text to the 100 or so users then possessing an Arpanet address, as that would have choked that entire network.

So he stored it on a server and made it available for free downloading -- with no hypertext links, forty years ago those hadn't been invented yet. Even though only six users took him up on his offer, the first electronic book of the digital information era had seen the light of day. This was in any event the most expensive digital book in history -- Hart calculated his computer-time for its production and estimated the cost of that at one million dollars.

Hart continued with his effort to make the greatest possible number of digital books available. Even though the first texts were difficult to read, lacking typography, showing only capitals, with no page formatting... He never strayed from his initial aim of making the works available to all. To this end he drew upon an essential characteristic of digital text: reproduction and distribution on the networks costs nearly nothing, and it costs even less and less as the machines and communications channels grow better at what they do.

As Hart wrote last July, "One thing about eBooks that most people haven't thought much is that eBooks are the very first thing that we're all able to have as much as we want other than air". And he anticipated future uses beyond just reading, such as textual analysis, word-comparison, fulltext search, and linguistic and stylistic studies all computer-assisted.

For a long time Hart's credo was "plain-vanilla ASCII": he avoided all page-formatting so that texts might be accessible to all machines, and all users. This led Project Gutenberg volunteers to adopt a strange system of accents, placing those next to the letters they affected. Hart's nonconformity regarding HTML, however, disappeared when the Web became the principal means of distributing digital texts: the texts follow now-accepted standards via their markup -- particularly the use of UTF-8, the character set standard which enabled composition in most world languages.

As with his project, and his vision, Hart was generous and inspiring; he possessed a grand sense of conviction, a sound grasp of the organization needed for his radical project -- he knew how to assemble millions of volunteers to accompany him on his adventure of digitizing the knowledge in the world's books. These were volunteers who began by hand-typing their texts, then by scanning and using optical character recognition, always pressed to make a careful transcription.



We often stand amazed before the giant industrialized projects of digitization. But let us reflect on the capacities offered by a coordinated mobilization of millions of volunteers. The construction of an open commons where all can share is a dream of many -- a project on which each can participate, each at their own level, in the construction of something greater than them all.

In the magazine Searcher in 2002, Michael Hart described this situation as a true change of paradigm: "It's the power of one person, alone in their basement, being able to type in their favorite books and give it to millions or billions of people. It just wasn't even remotely possible before...".

The personal will-power of Michael Hart enabled him to pursue his great project throughout his life. Even though it was 1994 before the hundredth text was available -- the Complete Works of Shakespeare -- just three years later the Divine Comedy of Dante became the thousandth. Project Gutenberg, with its 37,000 books in 60 languages, is now one of the principal sources of free digital books accessible in current formats -- epub, mobi... -- for readers, tablets, smartphones, and of course for the Web.



The assembled and reformatted texts are distributed free-of-charge and for any use. The free charge is only one aspect of the book access provided by Project Gutenberg: the texts also may be transmitted, re-edited, re-formatted using different tools, used in teaching or in other activities... This is the "public domain" in its full sense: not just a guarantee of "access" -- it is even more, a full "use".

Which is also the best way to protect "free" access: among the re-uses, even if some of those are commercial, in the sense of involving some supplementary added-value, there also is at least the use which relies simply upon the free distribution.

That is a lesson to consider, for all the institutions which now are charged with the public distribution of works which are in the public domain. Digitization should not add additional barriers to the use of the text, certainly not commercial barriers... these are efforts which often offer an improved "rehabilitation" of classical or forgotten works...

At a time when the British Library is signing a contract with Google limiting certain uses of a data file thus-obtained -- or the Bibliothèque nationale de France is adding a mention of "propriété" to digital works in the public domain distributed via Gallica... -- some notice, of the line on all this taken by Michael Hart, would be a good idea.



Michael Hart's strong character, his work-ethic and his capacity for mobilizing volunteers around his efforts, remain in our memory. The journals which have announced his death justifiably write of the "creator of the first electronic book".

That however is too simple. It is above all Michael Hart who placed the book at the heart of the information-sharing model for the Internet. His is the clear conscience which insisted upon the protection of the public domain -- protection against the creation of new protected enclaves, by technical means or commercial contract -- in the creation of his Project Gutenberg. Michael Hart never ceased defending a vision of the book as an organizer of exchange, of knowledge and of emotions, among individuals -- he mobilized volunteers for this effort, the building of an information network for all who love to read and to share what they read.



Hervé Le Crosnier
Caen, September 10, 2011
Text distributed under a Creative Commons license

http://blog.mondediplo.net/2011-09-11-Le-projet-Gutenberg-est-orphelin (original posting, in french)


--oOo--


[* version en français]

Le projet Gutenberg est orphelin : décès de Michael Hart

Michael Hart est décédé le 6 septembre, à l'âge de 64 ans. Il restera dans l'histoire de la culture numérique comme le fondateur du « projet Gutenberg », un projet coopératif majeur datant des débuts de l'internet et ayant réussi à créer un gigantesque fonds de livres numérisés offerts en partage.

Il y a quarante ans, en juillet 1971, le jeune Michael Hart reçoit son sésame pour utiliser, en temps partagé, l'ordinateur Xerox de l'Université d'Illinois à Urbana-Champain. Peu versé sur le calcul, il se demande ce qu'il pourrait bien faire d'utile à la société à partir d'un tel outil, limité, n'utilisant qu'un jeu de caractères en capitales, et très lent en regard des ordinateurs d'aujourd'hui.

Il utilisera son temps pour recopier la « Déclaration d'Indépendance » des États-Unis, en songeant aux idées de bibliothèques universelles lancées par les « pères fondateurs » de l'informatique, notamment Vannevar Bush, Joseph Licklider ou Ted Nelson. Le fichier pesait seulement 5 kilo-octets, mais il du renoncer à sa première idée d'envoyer le texte à la centaine d'usagers ayant une adresse sur Arpanet, car cela aurait bloqué tout le réseau.

Il le mit donc en dépôt sur un serveur pour un libre téléchargement (sans lien hypertexte, une notion qui n'existait pas il y a quarante ans). Même s'ils ne furent que six à profiter de l'offre, on considère que le premier « livre électronique » du réseau informatique avait vu le jour. Ce fut d'ailleurs le livre numérique le plus cher de l'histoire, Michael Hart ayant un jour calculé une valeur approximative de son accès à l'ordinateur et l'évaluant à 1 million de dollars.

Michael Hart a continué sur sa lancée pour rendre disponible la plus grande quantité de livres possible. Même si les premiers textes étaient difficilement lisibles, sans typographie, en lettres capitales, sans mise en page,... il n'a jamais dévié de sa volonté de rendre les œuvres disponibles à tous. Pour cela, il s'appuyait sur une caractéristique essentielle du document numérique : la reproduction et la diffusion via le réseau ne coûte presque rien, et même de moins en moins quand les machines et les tuyaux deviennent plus performants. Comme il l'écrivait encore en juillet dernier, « à part l'air que nous respirons, les livres numériques sont la seule chose dont nous pouvons disposer à volonté ».

Et il anticipait sur les usages à venir au delà de la lecture, comme l'analyse du texte, la comparaison de mots, la recherche par le contenu, l'établissement de correspondances ou les études linguistiques ou stylistiques assistées par l'ordinateur.

Longtemps son credo fut celui du « plain vanilla ascii », c'est à dire de refuser toute mise en page afin que les textes soient accessibles à toutes les machines, par tous les utilisateurs. Ceci conduisait les volontaires du projet Gutenberg à un codage particulier des accents, placés à côté de la lettre concernée. Mais sa méfiance devant HTML a disparu quand le web est devenu le principal outil de diffusion des écrits numériques : l'universalité passait dorénavant par le balisage, et l'utilisation de UTF-8, la norme de caractères qui permet d'écrire dans la plus grande partie des langues du monde.

Comme son projet, disons même sa vision, était généreuse et mobilisatrice ; comme il possédait un grand sens de la conviction et de l'organisation et proposait un discours radical, il a su regrouper des millions de volontaires pour l'accompagner dans sa tentative de numériser le savoir des livres. Des volontaires qui ont commencé par dactylographier les textes, puis utiliser scanner et reconnaissance de caractères, mais toujours incités à une relecture minutieuse.

On est souvent de nos jours ébahi devant les projets industriels de numérisation. Nous devrions plutôt réfléchir à la capacité offerte par la mobilisation coordonnée de millions de volontaires. Construire des communs ouverts au partage pour tous répond aux désirs de nombreuses personnes, qui peuvent participer, chacune à leur niveau, à la construction d'un ensemble qui les dépasse.

Dans le magazine Searcher en 2002, Michael Hart considérait cette situation comme un véritable changement de paradigme : « il est dorénavant possible à une personne isolée dans son appartement de rendre disponible son livre favori à des millions d'autres. C'était tout simplement inimaginable auparavant ».

La volonté de Michael Hart lui a permis de poursuivre son grand œuvre tout au long de sa vie. S'il fallut attendre 1994 pour que le centième texte soit disponible (les œuvres complètes de Shakespeare), trois ans plus tard la Divine Comédie de Dante fut le millième.

Le projet Gutenberg, avec ses 37000 livres en 60 langues, est aujourd'hui une des sources principales de livres numériques gratuits diffusés sous les formats actuels (epub, mobi,...) pour les liseuses, les tablettes, les ordiphones, et bien évidemment le web. Les textes rassemblés et relus sont mis à disposition librement pour tout usage. La gratuité n'est alors qu'un des aspects de l'accès aux livres du projet Gutenberg : ils peuvent aussi être transmis, ré-édités, reformatés pour de nouveaux outils, utilisés dans l'enseignement ou en activités diverses...

Le « domaine public » prend alors tout son sens : il ne s'agit pas de simplement garantir « l'accès », mais plus largement la ré-utilisation. Ce qui est aussi la meilleure façon de protéger l'accès « gratuit » : parmi les ré-utilisations, même si certaines sont commerciales parce qu'elles apportent une valeur ajoutée supplémentaire, il y en aura toujours au moins une qui visera à la simple diffusion. Une leçon à méditer pour toutes les institutions qui sont aujourd'hui en charge de rendre disponible auprès du public les œuvres du domaine public.

La numérisation ne doit pas ajouter des barrières supplémentaires sur le texte pour tous les usages, y compris commerciaux... qui souvent offrent une meilleur « réhabilitation » d'œ'œuvres classiques ou oubliées. Au moment où la British Library vient de signer un accord avec Google limitant certains usages des fichiers ainsi obtenus, où la Bibliothèque nationale de France ajoute une mention de « propriété » sur les œuvres numérisées à partir du domaine public et diffusées par Gallica... un tel rappel, qui fut la ligne de conduite permanente de Michael Hart, reste d'actualité.

Le caractère bien trempé de Michael Hart, sa puissance de travail et sa capacité à mobiliser des volontaires autour de lui restera dans notre souvenir. Les journaux qui ont annoncé son décès parlent à juste titre de « créateur du premier livre électronique ». C'est cependant réducteur. Il est surtout celui qui a remis le livre au c.ur du modèle de partage du réseau internet. C'est la pleine conscience qu'il fallait protéger le domaine public de la création des nouvelles enclosures par la technique ou par les contrats commerciaux qui a animé la création du Projet Gutenberg. Michael Hart n'a cessé de défendre une vision du livre comme organisateur des échanges de savoirs et des émotions entre des individus, mobilisant pour cela des volontaires, le réseau de tout ceux qui aiment lire ou faire partager la lecture.

Caen, le 10 septembre 2011
Hervé Le Crosnier

Texte diffusé sous licence Creative Commons

http://blog.mondediplo.net/2011-09-11-Le-projet-Gutenberg-est-orphelin

--oOo--

And the following is a personal note about Michael which I myself sent out -- somewhat in shock, I am getting perilously-close to age 64 now too -- to the excellent Exlibris list of which I have been a member since its beginnings, where another member just had told the rest of us the sad news --

Re: [EXLIBRIS-L] Michael S. Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg has died
Date: September 8, 2011 11:49 AM
From: Jack Kessler
To: [EXLIBRIS-L] Rare book and manuscripts



"Michael prided himself on being unreasonable..."

I must say, to all who knew him, that Michael Hart was among the most cordial of the various strong-minded people whom I have met and with whom I have corresponded, online.

He and I discussed various topics, over the years. Michael always was receptive to, even curious about, another person's ideas. For a crusader this is rare, or for any unreasonable nonconformist, if that is what he was -- it accounts perhaps for his great success at attracting other people to his projects and getting good work out of them. Michael was really good with some people.

He certainly was with me. His Project Gutenberg was an early inspiration -- one of the earliest -- in a world which largely, at that time, never even had heard of "digital texts".

That we all take the phenomenon so much for granted, now, is due too often to our own blindness; that the new medium might offer a little high-quality content -- might tell good stories, preserve and perpetuate valuable memories, and do so inexpensively or even *gasp* "for free" -- is due greatly to the foresight and efforts of a very small set of early digital-texts pioneers, and Michael S. Hart definitely was one of those.

Jack...

--oOo--

And, finally, a Codger-Note:

Those of us who love books -- not instead-of but as-well-as and in-addition-to digital texts, also the Internet and book bindings and iPhones and mise en page and incunabula and the rest -- need to know and understand that nothing lasts forever... But it sure didn't seem that way, back when all this digital stuff began, not so very long ago, or it didn't about the brand new and shiny "digital" part of it all anyway.

Michael Hart was young, back then -- Sergey and Larry were even younger -- "bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven" -- Bill Gates was young, Steve Jobs was young... If all this is to transition well to future generations, though, we need to acknowledge our own mortalities, make strenuous efforts to record the history, draw from our experiences the lessons we believe we have learned -- as Hervé has drawn them above, here, from Michael Hart and his fascinating Project Gutenberg -- in part because all that history is interesting, and at least so that the most egregious errors and cost and other overruns we have made, and there have been many, might not be made again.

It's all going to change. It has to. That is how Cerf & Kahn's tcp/ip and Hart's Project Gutenberg and GoogleBooks and Kindle and the iPhone and the Internet *cloud* all got to us in the first place: through change and by defying previous oldsters and their older paradigms, received opinions, conventional wisdoms.

But I've read somewhere that Google's gone and purchased their particular Palo Alto "garage"... the place where Sue Wojcicki rented space to Sergey & Larry for their early experiments... So, that's a Good Thing, I believe -- someday we'll all want to know, and be reminded.

And so I hope someone is holding onto what we have from Michael Hart and Project Gutenberg, too. It would be a shame if all our collective memory of this Digital Age's beginnings were to turn out to have been ephemera -- even worse than previous, this is likely to be digital ephemera, and for that it is far too easy to press a wrong button and *global delete*, and then the process of forgetting will commence.

Now, where did I put my glasses...


Jack Kessler, kessler@well.com

Friday, July 15, 2011

FYI France : Front National resources update, digital+

FYI France (since 1992) -- http://www.fyifrance.com/Fyarch/fy110315.htm
File 3: Ejournal & archive, by Jack Kessler, kessler@well.com -- Archive copy of an issue of the FYI France ejournal, ISSN 1071-5916, distributed via email on July 15, 2011 -- and, a little later, here on http://fyifrance.blogspot.com/, and at Facebook.

The Front National appears to be on the march again politically, and readers and their libraries digital & other, everywhere, are wondering -- "Is this a new FN?", "What happened to the old one?", "Who is leading this current FN, and is it different and if so how, and what has become of the old FN and its leadership?" -- about this Extreme Right party which repeatedly has dominated the political headlines, if not necessarily the politics, of the past quarter-century in France.

Now, once more, the Front National's national poll popularity has bulged up, into the double digits: 18%, 24% -- its new and some say even more charismatic leader, daughter of the founder, is running to become political kingmaker and perhaps even president of France.

It always has been difficult to find, and to provide, good information on the Front National phenomenon. Even within the Hexagone there has been much disagreement: diabolization, blind dismissal, also blind adoration, both the invocation of history and the ignorance of it, and much fear and great hatred on both sides -- the party has been used to conjure up terrible nightmares of the European 1940s and 1930s and before, as well as for-some the equally-terrible specters of 21st century founderings now of civil society, of culture, of family structure, of all-that-is-good.

So, a list of new books about the Front National in France follows below, here -- supplementing, for historians, the far longer list which has been assembled on the FYI France website, URL address also below here, over the years -- read!... -- most things-political get written-about before they happen, it's just that too often we don't read about them until afterward --



  • Goodliffe, Gabriel -- The Resurgence of the Radical Right in France : From Boulangisme to the Front National (2011)

  • Le Pen, Marine -- Marine Le Pen à contre flots : autobiographie (2011)

  • Fourest, Caroline ; Venner, Fiammetta -- Marine Le Pen (2011)

  • Ménard, Robert ; le Duverger, Emmanuelle -- Vive Le Pen ! (2011)

  • Kosciusko-Morizet, Nathalie -- Le front antinational (2011)

  • Simon, Jean-Marc -- Marine Le Pen, au nom du père (2011)

  • Liszkai, Làszlo -- Marine le Pen, le nouveau Front National ? (2010)

  • Petaux, Jean -- Jean-Marie Le Pen : Front national (2010)

  • Ellinas, Antonis A. -- The media and the far right in western Europe : playing the nationalist card (2010)

  • Bornschier, Simon -- Cleavage politics and the populist right : the new cultural conflict in Western Europe (2010)

  • Berezin, Mabel -- Illiberal politics in neoliberal times : culture, security and populism in the new Europe (2009)

  • Berntson, Marit -- Joan of Arc's Daughters: Women in France's National Front (2009)

  • Gautier, Jean-Paul -- Les extrèmes droites en France : de la traversée du désert à l'ascension du Front national, 1945-2008 (2009)

  • Shields, James G. -- The Extreme Right in France: From Pétain to Le Pen (Kindle, or Kindle App on Mac or PC, ebook edition!, 2009)



-- publication information and other details regarding the above, including publishers' descriptions both in French and translated into English, may be found online at,

http://www.fyifrance.com/FN/fnbks.htm

And there are additional digital resources and other information about the Front National on the website, as well: see generally,

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

-- on all of which I would greatly appreciate some help --

Much of my data there I have neglected, and it has grown out-of-date: I myself frankly never believed -- several times now, I admit -- that the Front National ever would be back. I thought this party would dwindle and disappear along with its then-already-elderly leader, beginning 'way back in the 1980s era of his most explosive effusions.

But it seems, for reasons I do not fully understand, that for at least some of the French the appeal of the FN transcends the lifespan of its leader... the Le Pen we knew before is now aged 82+ and apparently is fully-retired, but now the FN has located another Le Pen...

Any suggestions from readers here as to updates, then --- corrections, to my current FN data, and most of all new sources -- will be gratefully received, via email to kessler@well.com .

The more we all learn about this new or at least repackaged and apparently now more user-friendly Front National of daughter Marine Le Pen the better, I believe. France still is one of the leading nations of our geopolitical world, and she has been one of the formative forces of many of our various cultures -- friends in Vietnam follow the French, as do some in Ulan Batar, Dakar, Buenos Aires... It is important to all of us to know who leads the Front National, and who influences that leadership, and how and most of all why they do.



Print libraries, digital libraries, the demise of both the bookshop and the newspaper... The perennial problem of how-to-stay-current, in a new and fascinating and still-perilous albeit now-digital world...

Bonnes vacances,



Jack Kessler, kessler@well.com

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

FYI France : Paris the City, histories real & digital

FYI France (sm)(tm) -- books and libraries and reading,
on the Internet and otherwise, all located in France
-- see also fyifrance.com, or Facebook Jack Kessler's Wall

Several points of interest, for anyone with curiosity about or a passion for Paris, particularly its history... for sojourns or for daydreaming, this summer or anytime... Not a complete list: the moveable feast enjoys many locations, forever shifting -- but the following make useful additions to any visit, en-chair-et-en-os or virtual --


** Crypte archéologique du parvis Notre-Dame

The Roman city, Lutetia, unveiled and explained, as-revealed beneath the great plaza in front of Notre Dame and generally: dramatically presenting the maps and the reasoning which drove the ever-rational Romans to fortify this particular place, for fording the Seine, girding Gaul, and building the city...

Having visited this you will be able to see in your imagination these roots of Paris -- forever afterward, as you study the city, think about it, walk around, enjoy it -- the great north-south cardo maximus axis of the rues St. Martin & St. Jacques, the tiny mid-river island with its defenses, the road southward climbing the gentle hills carrying legions to Aquitaine, later on troops desperate to aid Martel against the Moors, later still seashell-bedecked pilgrims to Compostela...

Civic life began, for Paris, at this little river-ford Roman Empire provincial town, now revealed a few feet down beneath the square in front of the magnificent but much later medieval cathedral. Paris had humble but tough and enduring beginnings.

Also, it's cool down there, under the ground, sheltered from the sun within the "Crypte archéologique du parvis Notre-Dame" -- the moveable feast gets hot, in the summertime.

adresses --

Paris, ville antique (in French)
http://www.paris.culture.fr/

Paris, a Roman city (in English)
http://www.paris.culture.fr/en/

A set of good "Crypte Archéologique" fotos on Flicker (texts in English)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mytravelphotos/sets/72157603376622534/

Practical -- hours of opening etc. (in French, but websites generally are more dependable than print sources re. opening hours)
http://tinyurl.com/3v2q2vv

http://www.paris.fr/loisirs/musees-expos/musee-carnavalet-histoire-de-paris/ crypte-archeologique-du-parvis-notre-dame/rub_6468_stand_19971_port_14628

Practical -- brochure (in English)
http://www.paris.fr/viewmultimediadocument?multimediadocument-id=83136

news --

"Et Lutèce devint Paris" (in French, but worth seeing by all for the illustrations & timeline & videos at the very least, both online at the link below and on-site in & beneath the City of Light)

[tr. JK] "'And Lutetia Became Paris'. May 13, 2011. A new exhibit in the Crypte Archéologique de Notre-Dame reveals the metamorphosis over time of what once was 4th century Paris."

http://tinyurl.com/6fkfyjw

http://www.paris.fr/loisirs/musees-expos/musee-carnavalet-histoire-de-paris/expositon-et-lutece-devint-paris-a-la-crypte-archeologique/rub_6468_actu_96242_port_14627


** Musée de Cluny

The groups of pilgrims climbing the Mont Ste. Geneviève on the road to Compostela grew more numerous...

Paris in the Middle Ages grew, and changed: a monument to the transition as telling as the parvis Notre Dame's crypte, with its Roman town and Gothic cathedral, is the Quartier Latin's Musée de Cluny, with its Roman baths and Medieval townhouse.

"Outside the walls", both the latter were were... The baths, in their Roman era, were over on the Left Bank safely-distant from the superior officers who, originally perhaps and later, ordered and disciplined things on the more closely-regulated island -- and the officers were a safer distance too, from their own regulations, when they crossed-over on the bridge for a visit to the baths -- the thermae were a place to relax, then, to indulge, to misbehave a little.

The Medieval era country house, too... Nowadays it is little and low, compared to its towering modern central city surroundings. The location once must have been bucolic, though, looking out over yards and gardens and vegetables and even pastures... remembering that Passy and the Champs Élysées still were "champs", much later, when Franklin and Jefferson lived there...

The "green" medieval views from the Musée de Cluny's upper-storey windows now must be imagined in movies, but they are an important part of historical Paris. They're no longer available in the Sorbonne neighborhood by 1615, but they're very much in evidence still just down the road, surrounding St. Germain, per the wonderful Mérian map of that date which my "iPad app" of that map shows so clearly -- vegetable gardens & orchards & fields & windmills -- so the older faubourg, in closer to the Ile, must have enjoyed such amenities and their associated dangers, not so long before.

adresses --

This is the "Musée national du Moyen Age" -- known by everyone as the "Musée de Cluny" -- located at the southeast corner of the Boul'Mich / Boul'St. Germain crossing, just down the hill and across the little square from the Sorbonne -- all students who visit Paris see it from the street, too few go inside to look, but it's well worth a visit.

Musée national du Moyen Age (in French)
http://www.musee-moyenage.fr/

Musée national du Moyen Age / National Museum of the Middle Ages (in English)
http://www.musee-moyenage.fr/ang/index.html

Exposition, "L'Epée. Usages, mythes et symboles", au Musée de Cluny / Exhibition, "The Sword. Its use, myths, and symbols", at the Musée de Cluny
http://tinyurl.com/4y2f6ao

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Exposition-LEp%C3%A9e-Usages-mythes-et-symbole s-au-Mus%C3%A9e-de-Cluny/202613793104522

news --

a small sampling of "Musée de Cluny" daily activities, ongoing throughout the summer --

Mercredi 8 juin
10h30 Atelier enfants (2h) Le vitrail
14h30 Visite conférence (1h) Les thermes antiques de Lutèce et leurs galeries souterraines
15h45 Visite exposition (1h) L'épée : Usages, mythes et symboles

Jeudi 9 juin
12h30 un mois / une oeuvre (1h) L'épée : Usages, mythes et symboles Présentation de l'exposition par Michel Huynh, conservateur en chef, commissaire de l'exposition
18h30 un mois / une oeuvre (1h) L'épée : Usages, mythes et symboles Présentation de l'exposition par Michel Huynh, conservateur en chef, commissaire de l'exposition

Vendredi 10 juin
11h00 Atelier parents-bébés (45 mn) Qui es-tu ?

Samedi 11 juin
10h00 Atelier parents-bébés (45 mn) Qui es-tu ?
10h30 Démonstrations d'escrime médiévale par la compagnie « De Taille et d'Estoc »
11h00 Atelier parents-bébés (45 mn) Qui es-tu ?
11h30 Visite thématique (1h30) Sculpture romane et gothique (XIIe-XIIIe siècles)
13h00 Atelier en famille (45 mn) « Toucher la pierre, toucher le bois »
14h00 Démonstrations d'escrime médiévale par la compagnie « De Taille et d'Estoc »
14h00 Visite en famille (1h30) Art, artistes-artisans au Moyen Âge
14h30 Atelier en famille (45 mn) « Toucher la pierre, toucher le bois »
15h45 Visite générale (1h30) L'hôtel des abbés de Cluny et les chefs-d'oeuvre du musée
16h00 Démonstrations d'escrime médiévale par la compagnie « De Taille et d'Estoc »

Dimanche 12 juin
10h30 Démonstrations d'escrime médiévale par la compagnie « De Taille et d'Estoc »
14h00 Démonstrations d'escrime médiévale par la compagnie « De Taille et d'Estoc »
16h00 Démonstrations d'escrime médiévale par la compagnie « De Taille et d'Estoc »
...

http://www.musee-moyenage.fr/documents/semaine_6_juin_2011.pdf


** Musée Carnavalet

La ville radieuse: many have dreamed of "designing" Paris, and this museum has collected many of those designs and dreams and displays them well -- to the latest visionaries, who may wonder at how immensely-grand the dreams in the past were, also to the skeptics who shake their heads knowingly over the gargantuan reality Paris now has become, and how different that is from anything ever dreamt for it.

"Paris"... now 12+ million people, plus daily commuters from as far away as Chartres, 18% of the national population, more Parisian than French and more trans-national than France -- and nowadays branchée 24/7, plugged into our bright new digital world, networking with London, New York, Tokyo, Shanghai and other Global Cities, and the Silly Valley, and visiting formerly-nearby Lyon or Toulouse or Limoges only occasionally, and "en passant"... "Paris et le désert", plus ça change...

(Google's Ahmit Singhal pointed out -- only yesterday, at their "online search event", http://www.google.com/insidesearch/ -- that "mobiles" usage patterns, in global cities like Paris, increasingly reverse traditional work patterns -- that nowadays we use our "mobiles" to "seek knowledge" on our lunch hours, and at night, times when previously we would leave-the-office -- so some places & people truly have become a "24/7 world".)

adresses --

Musée Carnavalet -- Histoire de Paris (in French)
http://tinyurl.com/3qhg8f9

http://www.paris.fr/loisirs/musees-expos/musee-carnavalet-histoire-de-paris/p6468brochure (in English)

http://tinyurl.com/3sp3b6z

http://www.paris.fr/viewmultimediadocument?multimediadocument-id=88163

Musée Carnavalet -- collections / départments (in French)
http://tinyurl.com/437bf6g

http://www.paris.fr/loisirs/Portal.lut?page_id=6638&document_type_id=4&document_id=19798&portlet_id=15100

news --

[tr. JK] "'Eglise Saint-Sulpice, les coulisses d'une restauration' / 'The Church of Saint-Sulpice, backstage at a restoration'. May 18, 2011. Free Exhibit from June 1 through July 3, 1011. Salles d'exposition and salle 62. This exhibit at the Musée Carnavalet explains the important restoration project -- undertaken in 2006 and completed in December 2010 -- for the north tower of one of the largest churches in Paris..."


** Musée, Conservatoire national des arts et metiers

What really happened -- after the dreams, of the éclaircissement, what happened but had not been so clear, in the rationalist thinking which predominated back then -- industrialization, the great machines, the creativity, and the very different results of the confrontation of all that with "government" in 18th and 19th c. France as vs. Germany, and the UK, and the US and Japan and other places... although current events are suggesting that the jury may still be out on all those outcomes, it seems...

And for fans of Umberto Eco, the pendulum of Foucault still is there, masquerading its mysteries -- and the Statue of Liberty is there too, near its sister-sur-Seine -- in the little church which is the conservatoire's CNAM museum.

Be sure to make the trek upstairs, for the fabulous roof-beams, and the fascinating collection of scientific instruments -- Pascal's "calculating machine", for anyone with digital inclinations -- all displayed beneath the brave banner,

"avant 1750, l'état des lieux, l'homme prend les dimensions du monde / the situation pre-1750, Man sizes up the world"

-- the terrible twentieth century changed much...

And the story here is far older than Eco, older than Foucault, the story goes back to frankincense, see below...

adresses --

Practical -- (in French)
http://www.arts-et-metiers.net/musee.php?P=31&lang=fra&flash=f

Practical -- (in English)
http://www.arts-et-metiers.net/musee.php?P=31&lang=ang&flash=f

[tr. JK] "'Visite virtuelle du Musée' / 'Virtual visit to the museum'" -- you have to see this... particularly if you like Eco's book... (Flash App)
http://www.arts-et-metiers.net/musee.php?P=1005&lang=fra&flash=f

http://www.arts-et-metiers.net/visitevirtuelle/

[tr. JK] "'L'encens et la vapeur' / 'Frankincense and Steam'". The story of the Musée des arts et métiers of the CNAM site, from the 6th century, "From the Mérovingians to the Royal Foundation of 1059" -- to the end of the 20th century, "Modern Times"
http://www.arts-et-metiers.net/musee.php?P=122&lang=fra&flash=f

news --

summer events -- wild times, at the Musée des arts et métiers of the CNAM! -- all fun, mostly un-translatable -- "activiste codeur"(?)... -- so, if you will be in Paris en-chair-et-en-os, essayez-le --

Technologies au quotidien - 28 juin au 13 Juillet 2011

Le 5ème épisode du cycle proposé en partenariat avec la Gaîté lyrique invite l'activiste codeur américain Evan Roth / Graffiti Research Lab. Au programme : résidence, atelier et conférences...

Forum des utopies - Jeudi 23 juin 2011 de 17h à 21h30

Dans le cadre du festival Futur en Seine, le Musée des arts et métiers accueille le Forum des utopies, une programmation proposée par le Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire pour la Sociologie Economique, Lise (Cnam/CNRS). Depuis les expérimentations fouriéristes jusqu'aux utopies de la libre circulation du savoir d'aujourd'hui, comment nos représentations d'un autre travail possible ont-elles évolué ? Au programme : une table ronde sur la thématique Le travail : utopies d'hier et de demain, un parcours au travers des collections du musée L'homme augmenté : une utopie qui traverse l'histoire, ainsi que l'installation vidéo Cyborgs dans la brume réalisée par les artistes Stéphane Degoutin et Gwenola Wagon...

Fête de la musique : le parvis du Musée aux couleurs cubaines !

Pour fêter la Musique le 21 juin, le Musée reçoit l'orchestre cubain Wil Campa pour un concert festif sur le parvis. Une occasion inédite de découvrir la salsa cubaine dans la pure tradition des rues de La Havane et de Trinidad ! Composé de 14 musiciens et chanteurs et de 4 danseurs professionnels de la Grande Ecole de Salsa de La Havane, l'orchestre se produit pour la première fois en Europe. Pour l'occasion, Wil Campa a enregistré 3 titres de chanson française, dont deux chansons en hommage à Serge Gainsbourg pour la commémoration des 20 ans de sa disparition : "Elisa", "L'eau à la bouche" et "Déshabillez-moi"...

SUPRA* Vivez l'expérience Supra ! - Samedi 18 juin 2011 de 10h à 18h

SUPER HYPER MEGA SUPRA
Vivez l'expérience Supra!
A l'occasion du centenaire de la découverte de la SUPRAconductivité, venez découvrir les propriétés fascinantes des SUPRAconducteurs et leurs applications industrielles. Une fois refroidis à très basses températures, parfois jusqu'à -250°C, certains matériaux conduisent le courant électrique sans aucune résistance et sont capables de faire léviter les aimants... Ce sont les supraconducteurs ! 100 ans après la découverte du phénomène par Kamerlingh Onnes, les chercheurs des universités Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris Diderot, Paris-Sud, de l'ESPCI ParisTech, de l'ENS et du CNRS vous font vivre les grandes expériences de la supraconductivité et vous projettent dans un monde fascinant...

http://www.arts-et-metiers.net/musee.php?P=214&lang=fra&flash=f


** Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, Bibliothèque national de France

Soirées... One entire aspect of Paris is its "evenings": its gatherings -- whether afternoons or evenings or very late into the night -- never mornings, for Paris soirées are alcoholic and exhausting and that doesn't match with mornings -- but Paris gatherings discuss and debate everything, they are where a young américain can learn about a previous "Vietnam War", and about Parisian women, and a young américaine about Parisian men, it is where the movies of Woody Allen are debated endlessly, and the oulipiènnes literary merits of Lady Gaga's poetry and évenements are dismissed and defended, "attitude" becomes a science, where conversation & communication are the reigning arts.

It is a very old art-form itself, in Paris, the "soirée" with its animated and occasionally-cruel and always-exciting conversations. The 19th century's version of it began right here, in fact, at the Arsenal -- Victor Hugo, see below...

adresses --

Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal

http://fyifrance.com/fyi1pli3.htm#Arsenal (in English -- with that story about Victor Hugo...)

http://www.bnf.fr/fr/la_bnf/sites/a.site_bibliotheque_arsenal.html (in French)

http://www.bnf.fr/fr/la_bnf/anx_autres_sites/a.arsenal_salle_lecture.html (guided tours of la bib de l'Arsenal! -- in French)


** and, NEW!, Paris Ipad Apps...

Among many extraordinary Paris history online applications now, most interesting and some even useful, are several excellent iPad applications: and France has joined the iPad craze... needed-knowledge for that Paris soirée "cocktail", then...

The best Paris iPad app I've found so far is:

"DK Eyewitness Travel, Paris"

-- suitable for projection and classroom use, this -- one can view, through that beautiful little glass screen, very good photos and interesting descriptions, and nice maps, and often-beautiful site plan drawings of major Paris monuments -- good organization and very attractive mise en page... no reliure on which to comment, sadly, the era of "marocain" is grown-brittle and is fading...


** National Geographic Magazine, their February 2011 issue

In-print, on-iPad, also on-iPhone, plus there are online sur-la-toile extras -- the National Geographic has become very multimedia --

This American society's magazine, with their always-excellent visual sense, presents,

"Under Paris : you'll find bones, stones, miles of tunnels, and legal -- and illegal -- tourism"

[excerpt:]

" Getting There: It involves manholes and endless ladders.
" What to Wear: Miner's helmets are good.
" What to do: Work, party, paint or just explore the dark web of tunnels.

"By Neil Shea, Photograph by Stephen Alvarez

"The cab glides through Saturday morning. The great avenues are quiet, the shops closed. From a bakery comes the scent of fresh bread. At a stoplight a blur of movement draws my attention. A man in blue coveralls is emerging from a hole in the sidewalk. His hair falls in dreadlocks, and there is a lamp on his head. Now a young woman emerges, holding a lantern. She has long, slender legs and wears very short shorts. Both wear rubber boots, both are smeared with beige mud, like a tribal decoration. The man shoves the iron cover back over the hole and takes the woman's hand, and together they run grinning down the street..."

It's a view of Paris of which few who know and love the place, including native Parisians, ever really have heard... although they may have suspected...

I remember Fellini's scene in his "Roma", where he and the director of the new Rome subway works are riding together in a subterranean cart, the latter complaining that every time they dig they run into something new, something "Phoenician", or "Greek", or... his subway layout plan, it will look like a plate of spaghetti!

Paris has this about its past and in its bones and foundations, too. Victor Hugo loved it, remember his caressing descriptions in Notre Dame de Paris... Paris always reveals surprises, things you never knew were there, things which once were there but are no longer, things of which you've never dreamed or had nightmares -- and it's always in motion, ever-changing, the moveable feast.

The National Geographic piece evokes all this well, to the great surprise of many who thought they themselves knew all, about Paris -- see both the fascinating February 2011 print magazine issue, and their more extensive online digital version below --

adresse --

National Geographic -- Under Paris
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/02/paris-underground/shea-text


** And, finally, Paris walks -- an institution of European Culture since at least the Middle Ages...

The Left Bank -- begin at the BnF Tolbiac, see the Arènes de Lutèce, stop at the Musée de Cluny, the rue de la Huchette, St. Germain des Prés, the bords de la Seine, the Invalides, the Eiffel Tower... and,

The Quartier Latin -- by day
The Quartier Latin -- by night
The Jardin de Luxembourg -- on any hot Paris summer afternoon
The Champs -- see the tourists...
The boulevards -- flânez...
The museums -- a lifetime
The bibliothèques -- another
Visit every church -- yet another, and every one will offer a small concert series, in the summertime
Walk the canal, see the new Opera, and the old one, both for the buildings as much as the city walks
And hike up to Montmartre, early morning or late at night or both, and watch sunrises and sunsets from the grand steps up there

One way in which the digital never will beat the virtual, is city walks in Paris.

But... the digital does comes close, nowadays: on GoogleEarth -- and on GoogleMaps -- and WikiMapia does an excellent and very interesting job as well --

http://earth.google.com

http://maps.google.com

http://wikimapia.com

Each of the above now can be experienced in very interesting new ways: for example, drag the Google StreetView "little man" -- upper left hand corner of the map, in http://maps.google.com -- to the map, and try each of the walks mentioned above -- it is amazing how much more there is to know of Paris, via the virtual reality version of it available globally & anytime & online now.

Bonne route!


Jack Kessler, kessler@well.com