When interviewed by Jérôme Strazzulla in the daily newspaper Le Figaro of June 3, 1998, Jean-Pierre Angremy, president of the French National Library, stated: "We cannot, we will not be able to digitize everything. In the long term, a digital library will only be one element of the whole library." The digital library Gallica went online in 1997 with thousands of texts and images relating to French history, life and culture. A major collection of 19th-century French texts and images was available one year later.
1998: DIGITAL LIBRARIANS
[Overview]
The job of librarians, that had already changed a lot with computers, went on to change even more with the internet. Computers made catalogs much easier to handle. Instead of all these cards to be patiently classified into wood or metal drawers, librarians could type in bibliographic records in a program that was sorting out books by alphabetical, chronological and systematic order. Librarians also began using computer programs to lend books and buy new ones. By networking computers, the internet gave a boost to union catalogs for a state, a country or a region, and furthered interlibrary loan. Electronic mail became commonplace for internal and external communications. Librarians could subscribe to newsletters and participate in newsgroups and discussion forums. A number of librarians became webmasters to run library websites, online catalogs and digital libraries.
[In Depth (published in 1999)]
I interviewed Peter Raggett, a digital librarian at OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development), and Bruno Didier, a digital librarian at Institute Pasteur. Here are some excerpts.
= At the OECD Library
What is OECD? "The OECD is a club of like-minded countries. It is rich, in that OECD countries produce two thirds of the world's goods and services, but it is not an exclusive club. Essentially, membership is limited only by a country's commitment to a market economy and a pluralistic democracy. The core of original members has expanded from Europe and North America to include Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Finland, Mexico, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Korea. And there are many more contacts with the rest of the world through programmes with countries in the former Soviet bloc, Asia, Latin America - contacts which, in some cases, may lead to membership." (excerpt from the 1998 website)
The Center for Documentation and Information (CDI) of OECD provides information to OECD agents in support of their research work. In 1998, there were 60,000 monographs and 2,500 periodicals. The CDI also provides information in electronic format from databases, CD-ROMs and the internet.
Peter Raggett, head of CDI, has been a professional librarian for nearly twenty years, first working in UK government libraries and then at the OECD since 1994. He has used the internet since 1996. He built up the CDI Intranet pages, which became a main tool for the staff.