--- Begin Forwarded Message ---
>Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1998 08:48:12 -0400 (EDT)
>From: Ken Grabach <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: FYI France: BNF's "Catalan Atlas" online, "Ciel & Terre" (fwd)
Of potential interest to the cartographic community.
_________________________________________
Ken Grabach <[log in to unmask]>
International Documents and Maps Librarian
Miami University Libraries
Oxford, Ohio 45056 USA
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1998 17:35:08 -0700 (PDT)
From: Jack Kessler <[log in to unmask]>
To: Jack Kessler <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: FYI France: BNF's "Catalan Atlas" online, "Ciel & Terre"
FYI France: BNF's "Catalan Atlas" online, "Ciel & Terre"
In an extraordinary and beautiful new online exhibit, "Ciel &
Terre", at,
http://www.bnf.fr/web-bnf/expos/ciel/index.htm
the Bibliothe`que Nationale de France presents a number of
treasures, including:
* a useful teaching tool for "science" or "astronomy" or
"history" or "French" or "digital libraries" or any number of
other subjects;
* a fascinating model for what "digitalisation" might accomplish
in providing both preservation of and access to hitherto -
unavailable documents;
* a prime example of the library service which can be offered
online by a leading "digital library"; and,
* their magnificent "Catalan Atlas" (mss. esp 30, 1375-1380) --
long one of the BN manuscript collection treasures, rarely
available to a user in the past even if s/he was able to make the
trek to Paris, now online for nearly anyone nearly anywhere to
see and study.
A couple of general thoughts:
1) language, and other foreign things
The "Ciel & Terre" site is done in French. The site's
organization is superb: visually stunning, clear, rational as
only the French can be (?) -- one need not, I myself think, be
particularly fluent in the language to be able to enjoy the site.
The basic "Ciel & Terre" structure presents:
a) "Gros Plan", containing "L'Atlas Catalan" and "Atlas et
globes" -- beautiful images of interest to any antiquarian or
digital imaging aficionado;
b) "Comprendre" -- wonderful tours, with simple explanations and
fun "moving GIFs" and "Macromedia Flash 3.0" images, of concepts
like "La vie d'une e'toile" and "La Gravitation" ("Qui ne s'est
jamais demande' pourquoi les habitants d'Australie ou de
Patagonie ne tombaient-ils pas de la Terre ?"), and, "La
tectonique des plaques" -- the image for "earthquakes" is
entitled "La Californie" -- and, "Le Big bang" (_that_ sounds
better in French than it does in its original English...);
c) "En Images", offering details from the actual rooms of the
corresponding physical exhibits at Tolbiac and the rue Richelieu
(see below) -- Durer comes across impressively in online digital
format, see,
http://www.bnf.fr/web-bnf/expos/ciel/grand/1-001.htm
d) "Arre^t Sur" -- specific routes through "La myste`re des
origines", "L'avance'e des sciences", "Les images de l'univers",
"Le monde imagine'" -- each accompanied by a rich backup of
images and other materials, for example sections on "Myths" and
"Myths and the Sciences" then "Questions about Evolution,
Expansion, the Big Bang" and "Atelier [Teaching Materials]".
Accompanying the entire site -- those pull - across features
shown in the frame to the left -- are sections devoted to general
"Biographies", "Glossaire", Chronologie", "Bibliographie". In the
latter there are links: to Hubble images, to the Anglo - Australian
Observatory, to NASA, the "Messier Interactive Catalog", "Windows
to the Universe" at UMich, "Adonis, the Adaptive Optics system
for infrared astronomy" (France), "Views of the Solar System"
(US) -- as with anything on the Web, from anyplace you can go
anywhere... even if you yourself get lost, students love this...
Nearly everything on the site is sumptuously illustrated, so that
even someone not French and not fluent will enjoy a visit. But
the words which do appear on the "Ciel & Terre" site do appear in
French. And there are other "French" things about the site --
French citations predominating in the bibliography, French
approaches to formatting and description and punctuation, even
French spellings of non - French names ("Ptole'me'").
This prompts a general question about Cyberspace, occasioned by
the appearance of "Ciel & Terre": will Cyberspace be _more_
"English medium", even "American" -- as some of us have feared --
or will it be _less_?
Is the Internet leading to a domination of communication by
American language and values, as many of its critics (many of
them French) have warned, or is it a tool which in fact will
help the expansion of other cultures as well, certainly if uses
of it of the excellence of the BNF's "Ciel & Terre" give any
indication of its future? The glass may be empty or half full,
but at least the Beaujolais may come from France in addition to
Napa... and from Barossa, and Chile, and perhaps even China
some day soon...
Second general thought prompted by "Ciel & Terre":
2) the New Publishing: a convergence of authors and users, with
digital libraries pointing the way...
-- the need for publishers
There are plenty of people naively involved in the business of
"electronic / digital publishing" now who are discovering the
need for "publishers". The idea that digital media might "remove
the middleman" runs up against numerous "values added" which
publishers have provided in the print world: even if an
epublisher masters the intricacies of formatting and copyright
legalities and presentation and distribution, and user feedback
(all those letters...), there still is _marketing_ remaining --
nothing ever sold itself -- the flair, the genius, for selling
things, of people like Bennet Cerf and Harry Abrams, is needed
and has to be compensated in the epublishing world.
-- cost structures
But the epublishing world has new cost structures. Many of the
costs of print publishing -- much of production and editorial,
most of distribution, nearly all of inventory turnover and fixed
overhead leasing expense -- can be eliminated now, as Amazon.com
is teaching Barnes & Noble and Borders in a very hard lesson.
Epublishers will need compensation, as Cerf and Abrams did, but
it will be compensation for different things: marketing mostly, I
would think myself, but there is plenty more still to be done in
getting authors' texts to readers, even online -- witness the
enormous and sophisticated but very worthwhile effort which has
gone into the BNF's "Ciel & Terre", here -- not your "typical
Website"...
-- libraries -- online and off / new and traditional
Libraries may be vehicles which can point the way for epublishing
in this. Libraries have "content", after all. "Content" is the
buzzword driving much of digital information development: Bill
Gates acquires the Bettman Archive for its "content"; Disney has
"content"; Viacom's Sumner Redstone values Paramount for its
"content". Well, libraries certainly have "content": witness the
BNF's "Ciel & Terre"...
If -- copyright and budgeting and enormous internal political
shifts which must be made permitting -- a "print library" as
ancient and as "content - rich" as the old BN can transform
itself into a BNF "digital library" capable of producing goods
and services as sophisticated and useful as "Ciel & Terre",
perhaps there is some hope... Disney content and on - screen 500
- channel films are coming, but the BNF "digital library" perhaps
can show them and all of us some better ways...
Finally, a few presentation points about "Ciel & Terre":
* For the scholars and book lovers among us, in "Ciel & Terre"
every image presented as a thumbnail and accompanied by only
general text can be expanded by the user -- click on the image --
into a "full image" accompanied by a fairly full "bibliographic"
description (not Bowersian -- this is France), for example:
"La Terre au centre des sphe`res de l'univers, Diam. 14
cm., Dans L'Image du monde de Gossuin de Metz. Copie du XIIIe
sie`cle. Bibliothe`que nationale de France, Manuscrits, franc,ais
14964, f. 117 -- Le texte s'ache`ve par une image re'capitule'e
de la cre'ation. Au centre la Terre - lieu le plus bas de
l'univers ou` s'ouvre la gueule de l'enfer (inferius) - entoure'e
des quatre e'le'ments qui constituent le monde sublunaire de la
mutabilite' et du changement. Au-dessus, d'azur, le monde
e'the're' des sphe`res ce'lestes clos par les hie'rarchies
ange'liques. Enfin, l'empyre'e ou` re`gne le Cre'ateur."
or -- for a really fine satellite image of Paris (the new library
at Tolbiac is nearly dead - center... and it is _e'norme_...)
"Paris par SPOT : image SPOT du 14 mars 1993. Paris,
CNES,1993. 60 x 50 cm, quart infe'rieur droit. Bibliothe`que
nationale de France, Cartes et Plans, Ge D 27530 -- Cette image
satellite illustre de fac,on excellente le passage de l'optique
(technique de la photographie ae'rienne) au nume'rique (technique
de l'imagerie satellitale). Pour la re'aliser, on a choisi une
palette de 'pseudo-vraies couleurs', conc,ue pour se rapprocher
de la re'alite' visible et une palette de 'fausses couleurs
infra-rouge': rouge pour la couverture ve'ge'tale et bleu pour
les surfaces ba^ties."
* I found myself wishing for music. I am not an astronomer, with
a scientist's love for the details of exact description, and I
tend to get a little fuzzy and dreamy when viewing pictures of
the universe -- particularly pictures composed and executed
centuries ago. I also have a nice new "multimedia" machine on
which to view "Ciel & Terre", as will all of the French and now
even Japanese students dialing in to look at it on their new
iMacs. So some soft Debussy or Satie in the background would be
an interesting addition to the site for the general user.
* The site is designed with good Parisian flair: my cursor eased
even the relatively innocuous pain of waiting -- not long at 56k
-- for "full images" to load by urging me, each time, "patience..."
The online exhibit "Ciel & Terre" corresponds to a physical
exhibit on display at Tolbiac ("Les Figures du Ciel") and at the
rue Richelieu ("Les Couleurs de la Terre") from Oct 8 to Jan 10
-- hopefully the online version will remain available much
longer.
For digital library purposes it might be very valuable if the BNF
would assemble and publish summary attendance and usage figures,
on BIBLIO-FR and PACS-L and DIGLIBNS and elsewhere:
-- it would be useful to learn how many people attend the
physical exhibit versus the online one, and what the daytime /
nighttime / weekday patterns were for each;
-- it would be particularly interesting to follow the online
patterns forward, after the closure of the physical exhibit, to
see what happens to online attendance;
-- any "internal" information, such as which pages / rooms were
most popular either online or off-, would be interesting -- it
could be fascinating to find that more popular physical exhibit
sites do not correspond to the most popular online ones, and then
to speculate as to why -- I see whole new "kinesthesis" and
"cybernetics" and "proxemics" and "topological psychology" fields
forming here... and "marketing"...
Fe'licitations, once again, to the BNF.
--oOo--
FYI France (sm)(tm) e-journal ISSN 1071 - 5916
*
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