Sunday, March 20, 2011

FYI France : Oradour sur Glane, Bibliothèque

FYI France (since 1992) -- http://www.fyifrance.com/Fyarch/fy110315.htm
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 March 15, 2011 -- and, a little later, here on http://fyifrance.blogspot.com/, and at Facebook-Jack Kessler's Wall-http://tinyurl.com/4fz5ty4


Somewhat in need, this week, of examples of honorable people doing wise things, I come across one of many sterling websites offered by the French -- and offer it here as a prime example of how physical and digital sites combine well, in digital library information services nowadays --

--oOo--


* Oradour sur Glane, Bibliothèque

W3: http://www.oradour.org/index.php?rubrique=8

[See links to both the following at the URL below:]

GeoRef: 45|55|52.45| N,01|01|58.40|E(GoogleEarth)
GeoRef: (WikiMapia)

[tr. JK] "Around 2000 works and 300 periodicals are available for consultation in the library. This includes historical reference works and numerous personal accounts of the Second World War. The library also holds books on contemporary wars, reflections on violence and on memory, a notion increasingly considered in close relation with historical writing. Research works in German and in English also are available. The catalog is being digitized. It is anticipated that the catalog will be available online."


* Fonds ouvert : "This collection is composed essentially of copies or archival works from institutions such as the Musée Nationale de la Résistance, the Musée de la Résistance et de la déportation à Toulouse, the Archives départementales de la Haute-Vienne, or the Archives municipales de Limoges. One also can find documentation, books and book copies, news clippings and periodicals. Several 'original' archives also are contained in the collection."

See : Centre de la Mémoire d'Oradour-sur-Glane, Centre de Documentation, Archives, Fonds Ouvert, Études et documentation rassemblées, Depuis 2001, Répertoire numérique détaillé provisoire (Mars 2007) Mise à jour effectuée par Céline Deveaux.

http://www.oradour.org/telechargements/File/fonds_ouvert_modif.pdf


* Fonds privé : [Remarkable finding-aid descriptions online here of the personal side of life under the Occupation. JK]

La série FP regroupe tous les fonds privés (dons de particuliers):

1 FP : Pièces isolées
2 FP : Fonds Marguerite Simon
3 FP : Fonds Léopold Rechossière
4 FP : Fonds Haïm Wajnberg
5 FP : Fonds ANFMOG / Association nationale
des familles des martyrs d'Oradour-sur-Glane.
6 FP : Fonds René Besse
7 FP : Fonds Laurent Taveau
8 FP : Fonds Jean Henry
9 FP : Fonds Georges Magnane
10 FP : Fonds Erich Flogaus
11 FP: Fonds Jacqueline Pinède


The above now is installed, complete with interactive links and texts, at the following address:

http://fyifrance.com/fyi1pli3.htm#OradoursurGlaneBib


--oOo--


A Note: about earthquakes & tsunamis & radiation & memory --

My thought is that the sheer nobility of what is commemorated above, here, will be of interest to some -- also the controversy, as the appreciation of Les Lieux de Mémoire of modern France, of which Oradour sur Glane is one of the leading examples, has changed several times, over 50 years, and deserves consideration once again as always -- every nation has its Scoundrel Times, occasionally, and it is nice to remember that occasionally there have been genuine heroes too.

And, simply from a bibliographic point of view, that such a cultural monument should nowadays be so accessible... I was greatly moved, when I first read the accounts of the Second World War and of the Résistance, as a young boy back in the 1950s -- and then when I saw some of the real evidence of "all that", during my first personal visits to Europe a decade later -- that these memories have been kept alive, but also now made so accessible, to so many, is one of our modern marvels now 60 or 70 years later, I believe. So much gets forgotten, so quickly and completely.

There are "written" and "digital" resources, then -- also profound physical evidence -- at "Oradour sur Glane". View the website on GoogleEarth, visit the physical place, read the "written" record, dial-up / log into the "digital" -- there are many ways to "remember" a thing, and so many more of them are available, now, than there used to be.

So, perhaps humanity will do a better job of "remembering" its past, now -- perhaps not, as we are seeing this week, so sadly, in Fukushima-ken and Miyagi-ken and maybe even soon in Tokyo if the winds blow wrong -- but at least the French, at Oradour sur Glane, have made a good effort to remember, using all the old and new media available. One hopes that the rest of us will do the same now, regarding "nuclear energy" and the many other issues presenting themselves to all of us this week in Japan. Rarely do things happen for the very first time.

And it is not enough, to have simply a flood of digital "data" -- we need to add knowledge, to that data, so that it truly becomes "information" -- and then we need to add experience, to that, at least in memory and preferably hands-on, to transmute that information-overload flood into true "wisdom"...

We must learn, from our data and our science: we need good "information", and true "wisdom". We are not there yet, it seems, with nuclear energy; one hopes that we will get there soon.