Florence Poncé reports on the third in the series of national information days on European Cultural Programmes.
This was the third in the series of national information days on European Cultural Programmes - an event which is traditionally organised by the French Federation of Libraries Cooperation [1] and the Bibliothèque Publique d'Information, Centre Georges Pompidou [2].
The goals of the information days are to inform French professionals on European cultural policy, research projects and work programmes (calls for proposals, take-up actions, etc.). The information days also provide an opportunity to obtain up-to-date information on specific areas, such copyright issues. Last but not least, they provide an opportunity to meet colleagues from libraries, archives and museums from all regions, and to strengthen the links between professionals in the various information and memory institutions.
A number of guests from other European countries are invited every year: in 1999 we had the pleasure to of visits by Ronald Milne, from the Edinburg University Library, Michela Michilli from the Consortio Civita in Rome and George Tsakarissianos, from the Lambrakis Research Foundation in Athens. From the European Commission we had the great pleasure to welcome Bernard Smith, head of the Cultural Heritage Unit.
The article has been written for an international readership. The article focusses on French policy in the field of digitalization cultural heritage, after a brief review of the conference programme. The report on the information days will be published in the spring issue of the Bulletin des Bibliothèques de France [3].
What is the role of culture in the European Union? This could have been the title of the first speech, by Hélène Herschel, from the Département des Affaires Internationales, Ministère de la culture et de la communication. A broad panorama of the "cultural european policy" was drawn by addressing questions such as: What is the place of cultural equipment in the use of the structural funds, inside the EU regional policy? How can memory institutions participate in research policy under the Fourth Research and Development Framework Programme (with Telematics for Libraries) and under the Fifth RD Framework programme in the User-friendly Information Society Programme, often called the Information Society Technologies programme? Hélène also informed us on the latest developments of the programme Culture 2000: an agreement on the budget will be made at the end of the year.
Following on from this on the second day we organized a joint session with the two French Focal Points in the cultural field:
Valérie Martino set out the Relais-Culture-Europe [4], National Focal Point for the DG X programmes. This NFP also coordinates the key action "City of tomorrow and cultural heritage" in the programme "Energy, environment and sustainable development". The Fourth European conference on the theme "Research for cultural heritage protection" will be organized in Strasbourg, 22-24 November 2000.
Christine Montagut explained the aims and tools of the Centre français du commerce extérieur [5], as National Focal Points for the programme User friendly information society. With Bernard Smith, they gave information on the October call.
Concrete examples of european projects were given by G. Tsakarissianos, from the Lambrakis Research Foundation (the TRENDS project) and Elisabeth Freyre, Bibliothèque nationale de France (the REYNARD project).
An update on copyright issues for digitalization was also presented by Michèle Battisti, from the Association des professionnels de l'information et de la documentation [6].
Diversity of national contexts and strategies was the subject of the morning of the second day. The comparison between Italy, United Kingdom and France provided an impressive example of cultural, institutional and political European diversity. The debate was extended to speakers from libraries, archives, museums and commerical entreprises such as Museums On Line [7] and Jouve [8].
I will develop on the ideas given in the presentation by Jean-Pierre Dalbera, Mission de la Recherche et de la Technologie, on French strategy. But it seems necessary, for the international readership of Exploit Interactive, to first describe the organisational background of this action.
In 1982 a policy of decentralization was launched in France which has changed the decision-making process in the cultural field.
The decentralisation is possibly the most important reform of the century in this area. In the sixties we used to speak about "Paris and the French desert", as Paris concentrated political and economical powers: this era now seems far away. The reform was based on the creation of a new administrative and political level, the régions: they were drawn by joining the "old" départements. This administrative change was completed by an important transfer of power from the central government to the various territorial authorities: the 36,000 communes (municipalities), the 96 départements (districts) and the 26 regions [9].
As a consequence territorial authorities have a great freedom in the cultural field.
At the same time the government created permanent representations of his central services in the 26 new regions: for example, the Directions Régionales des Affaires Culturelles (DRAC). The state intervention is very rarely defined from Paris, but more and more at the regional level [10].
In this context the decision-making process is mainly in the hands of the local authorities. The cultural funding from the state is mostly related to contracts between the State and each region or grants for specific programmes. Let us consider the case of digitalization.
The French policy in the field is defined by the PAGSI, Programme d'Action Gouvernemental pour la Société de l'Information, launched in January 1998 [11].
Culture is one of the six domains of the PAGSI, with education, public services, regulation/legislation, business, innovation. Cultural institutions are concerned mainly in two areas: (1) to provide public access, to encourage a new multimedia literacy and creativity and (2) to provide content that reflect social, regional, linguistic and cultural diversity.
Digitalizing cultural heritage is a part of this programme.
The "plan de numerisation" is based on regular calls, opened to all memory institutions. Projects are selected by an expert comittee, the "comité scientifique pour la documentation informatisée et le multimédia", as explained Jean-Pierre Dalbéra.
The Ministry Of Culture has contracted a global deal with a private society, after a European call to concurence, to digitalize public collections. Archives, libraries, museums submit their plan to the expert comittee. The budget of this programme has been increasing every year since 1996 (when it was 2.5 million francs) and will be 12 million francs in 2000. The results of the last three years are available on the Ministry Of Culture web site [12].
The central services have also an important mission of information on technical and legal aspects. The information is on the web site and information days are organized regularly.
In addition to this programme, the national institutions as the Bibliothèque nationale de France [13] or the Louvre museum have their own programmes of digitalization cultural heritage. The development of educational web sites [14] is a common trend.
The Internet abolishes distance: the reader of web pages can carry out the same navigation on web sites as we did the 26 November, using some links [15], [16] from the archaeological excavations in Dauphiné to medieval paintings in the south, or travel through French archives [17].
The fourth in the series of information days will be organized in Paris in December 2000, under the French presidency of the European Union.
Florence Poncé
Direction du livre et de la lecture
27 avenue de l'Opra
75 001 Paris
France
Tel: +33 1 40 15 73 44
Email: florence.ponce@culture.fr
Florence Poncé is in charge of European and
international issues in the Direction du livre et de la lecture,
Ministére de la culture et de la communication.
She is member of the Public libraries permanent committee in IFLA.
Formerly, she has managed the East European periodicals in a research library,
Bibliothèque de Documentation Internationale Contemporaine (BDIC) in Nanterre.
Florence is a graduate of Ecole Nationale Suprieur in Paris,
a Doctor in Soviet Geography and has a Librarian diploma from the
Ecole Nationale Suprieur des Sciences de l'Information et des Bibliothèques.
She is member of the Association des Bibliothcaires Français (ABF) and of BESEDA,
the French association of Slavic Librarians.
For citation purposes:
Florence Poncé, "Digitizing Cultural Heritage: Museums, Archives, Libraries in France",
Exploit Interactive, issue 4, January 2000
URL: <http://www.exploit-lib.org/issue4/information-days/>
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