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Newsgroups: bit.listserv.pacs-l
Date:         Wed, 15 Apr 1992 12:48:57 CDT
From:         Jack Kessler <kessler@well.sf.ca.us>
Subject:      FYI France: the Bib.de France at Berkeley -- part 1 of 4

----------------------------Original message----------------------------

The Bibliothe`que de France came to Berkeley last Friday, with grace,
flair, and a Gallic panache which would have made Cyrano proud. A team
of well-informed, well-spoken, enthusiastic representatives of the
giant library project overcame obstacles of light, heat, language and
technology to convey their message, to a three-day audience of 2-300
polite and admiring, although at times sceptical, architects,
professors, and professional librarians.

This conference report will appear in four parts -- one covering each
of the four sessions -- in the interests both of giving me time to
digest some pretty wide-ranging information and of avoiding posting
anything longer than 8 screens at any given time. What follows is only
my version: I sincerely hope that others who attended will give their
own, and we'll get some disagreements going on the vast range of
material that was discussed. The first session presented the B.de
France. Session #2 presented other projects, including that of San
Francisco Public Library (which has both provided and received
inspiration to and from the B.de France in interesting ways). Session
#3 saw some interesting thinkers consider where all this is headed, and
#4 saw some famous thinkers consider what it all means.  For many of
us, it was our first venture beyond the large and growing but still
limited world of US-dominated Internet libraries.

First, a few current numbers: the new French library,

1) will occupy a site measuring over 500 by 1200 feet, or nearly
650,000 square feet -- 15 acres -- of central Paris: larger than the
Palais Royale, nearly the size of the Place de la Concorde, with enough
room for a half dozen football fields with bleachers -- construction
cost alone will be US$1.2 billion (with a "b");

2) will contain over 3 million square feet of floorspace, in
subterranean levels and in four 250-foot towers, the latter becoming
among the tallest points in Paris;

3) will house a collection of 12 million books in nearly 250 miles of
stacks, employing 2000 personnel to care for them and for users;

4) will offer this collection to 4000 seated readers (the new British
Library provides places for 45), and innumerable dial-in users via
networks using the latest library technologies; and,

5) is under way, lest you think all this is a dream -- the architect
proudly showed us pictures of foundations being poured.

UC Berkeley professors and conference organizers Howard Bloch and Carla
Hesse introduced the first session, comparing the underlying concept of
the B.de France to moments such as antiquity's development of the
papyrus roll, the 4th century's of the codex, the Middle Ages' of the
chained library, or the Renaissance's of the printed book: each
involved, said Bloch, "a mutation in our ways of perceiving and thus of
our understanding our world".

Professor Roger Hahn of UC then introduced the first French speaker,
who reinforced Bloch's emphasis on the new library as being a new
concept, and not just a new building:  He'le`ne Waysbord, "De'le'gue'
Scientifique" to the B.de France, delivered an eloquent and articulate
keynote address. She first focused upon current events, noting that
construction began March 23, and that, "the free exercise of the
creative mind always is in conflict with the calendar": she said that
compromises had been made, but that now the time for realization had
arrived. She described the project history, from the Miquel Report, to
President Mitterand's announcement at the Bastille Day Anniversary, to
the noisy but ultimately productive debates which caused many
alterations in the original plan (from the historians' revolt which
caused the President to drop plans to divide the collection at the year
1945, to the recent removal of the top two floors of the towers).

Waysbord then emphasized that throughout, two purposes are to be served
-- 1) conservation of the famous collections, and, 2) an entirely new
approach to disseminating information to the public, relying largely on
new electronic technologies -- with neither purpose taking precedence
over the other. She mentioned several of their techniques for this, but
only to say that the others who had come from Paris would explain more.
Her role, she thought, was more to assure the audience that this double
purpose -- "conservation et diffusion" -- is uppermost in the minds of
all who now are working on the project. It is their hope that their new
library, furthermore, can become one of the "nerve centers" of the
expanding information network which is growing around the globe. But
she warned that, although their library will be open for use by 1995,
the broader concept of which it is a part may never be finished, "like
all the great adventures of the spirit".

Dominique Perrault -- looking very much the wild-eyed creative
architect, with wavy black hair, black tie and shirt, and much Gallic
passion -- then enthusiastically described his dreams for his
building.  The architectural problem, he says, was to create both a
monument and a functioning library service center, all the while
housing and caring for an enormous and unwieldy collection of books.
His idea is that this home of the "patrimoine culturel" of France
should be symbolized by these four great towers -- which others have
said resemble four open books -- while services for readers are
provided below, in congenial reading rooms opening into a beautiful
garden. Perrault is proud of his combination of wood with steel and
concrete: throughout, views will open onto wood architectural features,
or onto large live trees in the garden, giving visual relief from the
impressive but overpoweringly massive forms of the building.

Ge'rald Grunberg, head of library management for the project, then
descibed how they foresee Perrault's building working, as a library.
His is an unenviable task. The librarians in the audience began
sharpening their knives during his talk, bringing them out a bit during
his colleague Alain Giffard's talk the next day. One could hear them
chanting under their breath, "how will they keep it warm?", "how will
they keep it dry?", "how will readers find anything and how long will
they wait?", and, of course, "how will they keep it quiet?"

Grunberg insists that, in keeping with Mme. Waysbord's "conservation/
diffusion" ideal, the project management will serve, simultaneously,
both the researchers whom the old BN has served so well, and their new
"study" clientele, composed of the school and public users who have not
been able to penetrate the BN in the past. He outlined the new subject
classification system, which Jacqueline Sanson discussed in greater
detail later. He described, with slides, the three divisions of the new
library space: 1) reception -- including bookshops, exhibition halls,
restaurants and, "naturellement" he says, cafe's; 2) reading rooms --
public areas, including newspapers and journals and popular literature,
and including a 12,000 square foot area with 300 seats just for
children; 3) research rooms -- providing all the old amenities of the
BN, and more, for the scholarly use of the collections.

Grunberg also described preservation at the B.de France. Their
acid-paper problem, he says, involves 2.6 million volumes, their
emergencies-in-need-of-microfilming 500 million images, their rebinding
and reconditioning problems 1 and 4 million volumes each: not a single
day's work, he pointed out. Their double approach is, 1) maintenance --
preservation of the existing collection, which will be handled both in
ateliers at the library and in a hi-tech conservation center being
constructed at Marne-la-Valle'e, outside Paris, and, 2) prevention --
digitization and other preservation techniques to be used on all new
materials to be acquired. All new approaches to materials-handling,
microfilming, photocopying, dust removal, and digitizing are being
considered. (Information on this can be found in my PACS-L/EXLIBRIS
posting of January 13, more copies of which I'll be happy to send out.)
Grunberg raised the tantalizing point that the B.de France might
negotiate fee-for-service site licences with online publishers.

A few questions and problems became apparent this first day.  Dorothy
Gregor, UC Berkeley's new head librarian, turned in a stellar
performance as emcee-with-a-malfunctioning-mike (proving that the
French had no monopoly on aplomb in difficult situations). For some
reason the microphone kept turning itself off then, during Mme.
Waysbord's speech, every time she uttered the word "sound" -- several
of us wondered whether, if she said "lumie`re", the lights would go out
as well -- although she herself remained as cool and composed as Ms.
Gregor. The more general point occurred to most of us though, that the
French were saying nothing about backups: if they convert their
patrimoine culturel to electronic formats, and someone or something
pulls the plug, accidentally or otherwise, how will they provide
against a devastating loss?

Then too, this building has begun to resemble a horse-assembled-
by-a-committee. The bold concepts remain -- both the library idea and
the architectural idea -- but it gets hard to imagine how the
combination of high-minded research with democratic public access will
work. French public libraries collect comic books -- the famous bandes
dessine'es -- and French public readers are not much more quiet or
well-behaved than are their US counterparts, as any visitor to the BPI
library at the Centre Pompidou can attest: the combination of these
activities with those of painstaking academic research inherited from
the old BN is going to be a neat trick if they can make it work. They
may need reminding of Abe Lincoln's aphorism about the difficulty of
pleasing all the people all the time.

Finally, as to M. Perrault's building, it is easy but simple-minded to
find fault.  It is easy, for example, to call it an "upside-down
table", or "four-big-books-in-search-of-a-shelf" -- easy to laugh; or
it is easy to bemoan the windswept plaza which the structure will
become in winter, or the furnace that it will be in summer, when most
US visitors will see it.  It is hard to imagine the neighborhood
boulangerie which will fit in with this giant megalith next door, as
Perrault so whimsically suggests one might.

Their building is being built, however, which is more than can be said
for most library dreams elsewhere. Its design also represents, to a
European, a dream very difficult for Americans to understand. Urban
open space is a priceless commodity in their ancient, dense cities.  It
has been won only at great expense, usually by urban totalitarians like
Haussman, who arranged great boulevards down which cannons could be
shot in case of insurrection. US cities take their great parks and wide
avenues for granted. In Europe, the vast space of Perrault's design
will give much-desired relief for the densely-packed quarters which
border it. The point which Mme. Waysbord emphasized, though, ultimately
seems to be the key: that what the French are constructing is not just
a building, but also a new approach to library service, realizing
dreams which many have had, both in and outside of France.

Next: the French are not alone -- others, including San Francisco PL.

Jack Kessler

kessler@well.sf.ca.us
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