Tuesday, January 15, 2013

FYI France: Ariège 09, libraries digital & other


T his beautiful and fascinatingly-remote part of France boasts library service online, now, as well as bricks-and-mortar / paper-and-cardboard: a list of libraries and library resources in l'Ariège follows, plus some more general thoughts about online digital library services, access and le marketing, and perhaps even online book-selling --

-- researchers, remember that in France "provincial" libraries often house remarkable "finds" -- recalling the confiscations révolutionnaires which somehow never made it to Paris, and other French library-history events... -- for instance the "bibliothèque municipale" at Lyon houses a manuscript from Charlemagne's court, among its many other treasures (Ms. 619, & now you can read it online at http://florus.bm-lyon.fr/index.php);

-- also, if you are there on-sabbatical or for other reasons, these local libraries are great places just to go and read, and to accommodate accompanying-family for the same purpose -- get out of the rainy-day gîte rural or tiny hotel room -- particularly now in wintertime, these local libraries in France are warm, friendly (this isn't Big City Paris), staffed with knowledgeable and well-trained professionals, and often equipped with remarkably user-friendly in-house databases and online access -- they house great "local history" resources too, often of incomparable worth to any writer...

-- and, as always, if any of you have any corrections to offer or suggestions to make, or any personal experiences with or other information about any of the following institutions to relate, I'd like very much to hear : via mèl or mél or courriel, to kessler@well.com --

 


One of the wonderful things about studying librarianship in France is enjoying its street-addresses -- so be sure to notice among the above, for example, "Village", "Chapelle", "Hôtel de Ville"... few US or other outre-mer libraries can boast of a roost at, say, "Château Vicomtes"...

n.b. Online digital librarianship everywhere will lose much, if it abandons this sort of "sense of place", i.e. "Rural Route 2, postal box 39, Enid, Oklahoma", or, "Kanda, Chiyoda-Ku, Tokyo" -- an IP number just doesn't have the same "ring"... We all must guard against becoming just-ephemera on the Nets, what we do there and ourselves as well, as per the warnings of William Gibson ("Neuromancer") and Ridley Scott ("Blade Runner"), Jaron Lanier ("You Are Not A Gadget: A Manifesto"), and many others. I'm not "CA", I am "California"!

For a useful map, of Ariège library resources:
http://www.cg09.fr/bdp09/2reseau/biblio/carte.html

All of the above entries eventually will appear, and gradually be enhanced there, on FYI France, at --
http://fyifrance.com/fyi1plib.htm

-- but please have patience, these email ejournal postings are a devoir which I have pursued, as religiously as I can, on a monthly basis sauf août since 1992 -- the website on the other hand is a labor-of-love and, as such, gets backed-up and fleshed-out only occasionally and as time & energy permit

-- so if I delay please remind me, as some of you kindly do, and I will take a break from current Pinterest "pinning" (see below) and get the website entries done too.

--oOo--

And now a Note: regarding outreach, and le marketing...

For some very fine photos, and other images, of Ariège, see the following: work-in-progress, with a librarianly & bookish bias --

http://pinterest.com/kessleraj/ariege/

-- Pinterest.com is the Internet's fastest-growing site, now -- over 11 million users within a very short start-up time, currently over 25 million users, and still growing very rapidly -- Pinterest is another example, like Twitter and Facebook, of something online which began with one intention and rapidly became another thing the likes of which its founders never had imagined -- like the Internet itself --


  • The Internet, originally just getting those military-signals around a bombed-out Omaha -- now so much more...

  • Twitter, originally just "hey man wazzup" cleverspeak -- now fomenting and even creating modern global revolutions, both peaceful and non-...

  • Facebook, originally just "Harvard hotties" -- now 1+ billion-strong users worldwide, a claim which few human institutions in history ever have been able to make, with consequences financial & advertising & marketing & legal, organizational, political, social, cultural, all as-yet-untested because as-yet-conceived & implemented, but they're working on it, all of it...

  • so now comes Pinterest, originally just "socializing through images"... -- but already it is an enormous advertising-platform for the many users for whom images are more effective than text, for many purposes not just socializing, any more than the effect of Gutenberg's invention was simply to sell bibles -- "Of what use is a book without pictures?" asked Alice.

We see the future "through a glass, darkly". Also, we grow with our technologies: Columbus set out for India, Lady Ada & Charles Babbage were simply fooling around with arithmetic calculations, Sir Alexander Fleming was searching for something Entirely Different.

It's all why Isaac Asimov famously observed, "The greatest words in Science are not, 'Eureka I have found it!', but, 'Gee, that's funny...'"

Bonne route!

Jack Kessler, kessler@well.com

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