--- 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 * | FYI France (sm)(tm) is a monthly electronic journal, | published since 1992 as a small - scale, personal, | experiment, in the creation of large - scale | "information overload", by Jack Kessler. Any material / \ written by me which appears in FYI France may be ----- copied and used by anyone for any good purpose, so // \\ long as, a) they give me credit and show my e - mail --------- address and, b) it isn't going to make them money: if // \\ if it is going to make them money, they must get my permission in advance, and share some of the money which they get with me. Use of material written by others requires their permission. FYI France archives are at http://infolib.berkeley.edu (search fyifrance), or http:[log in to unmask] (BIBLIO-FR econference archive), or at http://www.fyifrance.com , or at http://listserv.uh.edu/archives/pacs-l.html . Suggestions, reactions, criticisms, praise, and poison-pen letters all will be gratefully received at [log in to unmask] . Copyright 1992- by Jack Kessler, all rights reserved. --oOo-- --- End Forwarded Message ---