Sender: Rare book and manuscripts <EXLIBRIS-L@LISTSERV.INDIANA.EDU>
FYI France: digital libraries, Drancy
Wonderful libraries are available now, in the Paris "banlieue":
the following group of small towns, located out near one of the
great landmarks of Early Aviation, Drancy with its difficult
past... So this is how one suburb approaches it, in Paris: coping
with their history, simultaneously providing one of France's best
bets for resolving their current "guerre des banlieues" --
keeping the culture both strong & open --
Communauté Le Bourget-Drancy
Présentation des médiathèques
[tr. JK:]
1 main central médiathèque
5 neighborhood médiathèques
* "Books, bandes dessinées, periodicals, dvds, cd-roms, to
use and for borrowing"
* "Access and services free of charge to all"
"The Bourget-Drancy networks is a public cultural service, a
necessity in the exercise of democracy. It guarantees to citizens
an equality of access, of every person, to reading and to
documentary resources, as part of its general functions. It is
under the authority of the town mayor. Its task is to promote the
creation, provide for the conservation, and to maintain, the
collections in its charge, as provided by law.
"The network offers a union catalog of the collections of the
médiathèques du Bourget-Drancy, which permits the search and
retrieval of all the available documents, wherever they are
located. An inter-library loan service, enabling the borrowing of
any document, is available as well."
Courriel:
mediatheques@drancy.fr
Sites internet :
http://www.lebourget-drancy.org
[Main website. JK]
http://lebourget-drancy.org/opacwebaloes/?IdPage=207#GB
[Library summaries, source for the following... JK]
* Médiathèque Georges Brassens
- Superficie: 3000m2 ouverts au public
- une collection de 65,000 livres, 8000 DVD et 6500 CD...
- 34 professionnels de l'information à votre service,
- des ordinateurs connectés à internet accessibles au public,
- trois espaces: un espace jeunesse de 0 à 14 ans au rez de
chaussée, un espace documentaires adultes au 1er et un espace
fictions adultes au 2ème étage,
- un auditorium et un parking de 100 places chacun en sous-sol.
* Médiathèque Economie
- Superficie: 420m2
- une collection de 18,279 livres et 928 DVD,
- 2 professionnels à votre service,
- 2 espaces: un espace adultes au rez-de-chaussée et un espace
jeunesse à l'étage,
- 30 places assises et 3 ordinateurs connectés à Internet.
* Médiathèque Bois de Groslay
- une collection de 17,082 livres et 627 CD sous forme de textes
lus et de musique,
- 2 professionnels sont à votre service,
- 2 espaces: un espace adulte au rez de chaussée, un espace
jeunesse et une salle d'animation à l'étage,
- Un ordinateur connecté à Internet pour le public
- 30 places assises pour pouvoir consulter sur place vos documents.
* Médiathèque Gaston Roulaud
- une collection de 14,439 livres et des CD
- 2 professionels
- 2 espaces: un espace adulte et un espace jeunesse au rez de chaussée
- 20 places assises
- le public est tenu informé des animations qui se tiennent à la
médiathèque centrale Georges Brassens
* Médiathèque le Bourget
- des livres, des CDROM et des CD de textes lus, de la musique et
des contes,
- 7 professionnelles à votre service,
- au rez-de-chaussée un espace jeunesse et un espace adulte,
- la connexion Internet n'est pas encore disponible,
- 30 places assises,
- un ordinateur acessible au public pour la consultation du
catalogue,
- des animations : un club de lecture pour les adultes, un jeudi
par mois et l'heure du conte les mercredis et samedis pour les enfants.
* Médiathèque Avenir
- Superficie: 300m2
- Collections : 14,439 livres, 709 CD
- Rez de chaussée: un espace jeunesse avec un coin adolescents et
un espace adulte
- Animation: des séances de contes sont organisées une fois par mois.
- La médiathèque reçoit aussi un illustrateur.
- Deux visites de classes sont organisées le mardi après-midi .
- La visite des maternelles se tient le vendredi matin, le
mercredi matin pour les centres de loisirs.
Importantly, too, the links listed in the website's left column
lead to valuable and very interesting digital library resources:
"Accueil"
* Infos pratiques
** Horaires
** Nos coordonnées
** Le guide du lecteur
* Animations
** Dans les bibliothèques de Drancy
** Dans d'autres lieux
* Nos sélections
** Nos coups de coeur
** La sitothèque...
-- and at this last, one can find the following, at URL,
http://83.206.107.108:81/sitotheque/
"Les rubriques thématiques du répertoire de sites"
Well, I can think of no better way of doing a "digital library"
study of modern French culture in the Digital Age -- of its
similarities to, and significant differences with, US and other
cultures -- no the entire globe does _not_ "use English"... --
than by examining such a sitothèque, providing as it does
excellent evidence of what is on the minds of folks in France -- so,
A la maison
Arts
Encyclopédies
Formation
Géographie et démographie
Histoire
Ile de France
Informations et médias
Jeunesse
Langues
Littératures
Loisirs, sports
Politique et institutions
Santé et médecine
Sciences et techniques
Sciences humaines
Société
Spectacle vivant
Vie économique et emploi
Vie pratique
-- and, among the many very interesting links provided, using the
above list, one finds here the following --
"Histoire" =>
"Seconde guerre mondiale et Shoah" =>
"Conservatoire Historique du Camp de Drancy"
http://www.camp-de-drancy.asso.fr/
!... What must it be like, to be a young librarian in suburban
France, now, having to cope with not only the considerable
challenges of the present, but also the looming presences of a
very long and sometimes very difficult past? Drancy was the point
of departure to the death camps, for the Jewish population of
Paris during the second World War: a major railhead, with large
buildings in which to hold large populations pending "shipment"
-- the "cattle-cars"... terrifying, soul-destroying...
I'm not sure how I'd do it, myself -- how anyone would, anywhere
else -- that is the point made eloquently by Hannah Arendt, now
so long ago, about the "banalization" of all this. So the French,
bravely or so I personally believe, confront it well, now, after
that long period of postwar denial: as Tony Judt puts the old
problem into its new context, in a thoughtful piece in the
February 14 New York Review of Books,
"Sixty years ago Hannah Arendt feared that we would not
know how to speak of evil and that we would therefore
never grasp its significance."
-- but, he continues, addressing specifically our modern "Axis of
Evil" fears --
"Today we speak of 'evil' all the time -- but with the
same result, that we have diluted its meaning."
So perhaps nous autres now worried over "Axis of Evil" and
"Terrorism" and so on can learn once more from the French: that
it's neither denial nor merchandising -- instead of either, how
to recognize evil so as to deal with it effectively, as it does
and forever will come back to haunt us again, from time to time.
Here a small French library in a Paris suburb perhaps shows the
rest of us, then: neither denial nor obsession but something
in-between, something moderate but still effective -- always to
remember and deal with it, effectively, every time it comes up,
but never allow it, or allow others to use it, to run our lives.
And a more general Note:
The banlieue is where the action is, these days, in Paris.
Somewhat, at least...
It is where most of the Parisian French themselves are: where
they live, and increasingly where they work, as in all of our
largest "global" cities -- Paris' "urban region" now containing
over 12 millon people -- also where they attend school, do their
shopping, read their journaux, form their ideas, live, love, die.
In modern gigantesque Paris, as in Greater San Jose (aka The San
Francisco Bay Area, current population 7+ million), and in
Boshington (55m), Greater London (7m), the Randstad (10m), Tokyo
Region (43m), Greater Shanghai (well over 20m already and growing
fast...), it's all about the 'burbs, too -- as it has been
famously in the Southern California Sprawl for some time.
Just look at the above places using Google Earth, now, to believe
this: staggering immensities -- satellite imagery tells the story
best -- urban growth and sprawl unimagineable a generation ago...
So the 19th century image of the urbane man-about-town --
acquainted with all there was to know of Le Tout Paris, content
to flâner sur les grands boulevards, and bavarder dans les cafés,
and frequent a weekend soirée or two in the center-city salons
and parcs, really "knowing" Paris -- that wasn't true even then.
Paris life left Paris for Drancy, and for L'Haÿ-les-Roses,
Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Garges-les-Gonesse, Neuilly-sur-Marne,
Palaiseau, long ago. The French part of it did, anyway... What
remains at the Paris city-center has less to do with France,
nowadays, than it does with Boshington and those other
gigantesque global cities, or at least with their city centers.
So to understand France, in the Paris region, one must look to
Drancy: 65,000 people -- 75% born in France, 25% born somewhere
else -- long ago the manor estate of the Roman Derencius, and
before him of another named Terentius -- a place of terrifying
WWII memories, at times still emerging from that -- of earlier
more glorious memories, too, of the earliest years of modern
aviation -- quasi-industrial now, out near the old Le Bourget
airport, small houses, big shopping centers, pretty parks -- and
trying its best to defy the "France Qui Tombe" and "Nouveau
monde, Vieille France" nightmares of the déclinists, working hard
at becoming modern while remaining relentlessly French.
How to accomplish that last, achieve that balance? How do the
Parisian French, at any rate, accomplish it? France is a land of
ideas, particularly in its Parisian part: one can hardly do
better than begin with a look at its local libraries.
Jack, kessler@well.com
Sent from my iPhone -- The Future will be Handheld
*
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POZZO:
Autrefois, il dansait la farandole, le tango, le slow
et même le twist. Il bondissait. Maintenant il ne fait
plus que ça. Savez-vous comment il l'appelle ?...
La danse du filet. Il se croît empêtré dans un filet...
-- Beckett, "En attendant Godot" (1952)
--oOo--