ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries 3 9 4 / C&RL N e w s Conference Circuit The Irès grande bibliothèque and the library of the future By Larry R. Oberg P la n s f o r th e n e w F rench lib ra ry c a u se d e b a te F o r so m e tim e n o w , c o n tr o v e rs y h a s plagued the ambitious French plan to build a new national library. It did not surface, h ever, at the recent Berkeley, California, confer­ ence o n “La Très grande bibliothèque and the Library of the Future” w here, for three days, President François Mitterand’s latest an d most ambitious grand projet sm s ably described and defended by a know ledgeable, articulate, and enthusiastic contingent o f French librarians, aca­ demicians, an d architects. D espite grum blings in the halls, the audi­ ence of 200-300 American librarians, architects, teaching faculty, and Berkeley undergraduates practicing their French, w ere polite, receptive, and at times reverential, as they struggled to fathom th e m ythic p ro p o rtio n s o f the new Bibliothèque de France, a construction that will no t only be the “the w o rld ’s largest library,” bu t also a m onum ent to a nation’s scientific an d cultural heritage that prom ises to alter sub­ stantially the landscape o f Paris. Held at the Clark Kerr campus of the University of California on April 10-12, the conference fea­ tured American panelists presenting plans for the new San Francisco Public Library, the new Science, Industry, and Business Library at the New York Public Library, and discussed the fate of the book and the implications of automation for networking in the 21st century. But almost everyone’s time, attention, and interest were focussed upon archi­ tect Dominique Perrault’s plans for a $1.3 billion, 726,000-square-foot library in Paris that will house 15 million books, seat 4,000 readers, use 250 miles of bookstacks, and employ some 2,000 librarians an d support staff. o Often facetiously referred to as the TGB, or très grande bibliothèque, a play-on-initials with TGV, the French high-speed train, the new library will subsume the majority of the collections and staff of the old Bibliothèque Nationale (BN). Construction of the new Library of France began on March 23 of this year and the facility is expected to open in w1­995, a date that presumably only fortuitously cor­ responds to President Mitterand’s final year in of­ fice. The library completes his legacy of monumen­ tal architectural undertakings, which also includes the glass pyramides at the new entrance to the Louvre museum, the ultra-modem popular opera at the Place de la Bastille, and the startlingly white Grande Arche de la Défense. The fin a l design A subject of intense debate in France, the plans for the n ew library w ere personally selected by President Mitterand from am ong four final designs chosen by a jury of experts. Located o n a 15-acre Left Bank site that overlooks the Seine, the new library is com posed of four 24- story, L-shaped steel, concrete, an d w o o d tow ­ ers that resem ble o p en books. Criticized as self- referential in France an d as regressive in the United States, the book-tow ers ignore the river and o p en inw ard u p o n a sunken rectangular garden surrounded o n all sides by four glass- w alled su b terran ean levels o f public access space that will house reading rooms, hanging balconies, open-stack collections, bookshops, and restaurants. Much o f th e controversy sur­ rounding the project focusses on the fact that the library’s readers and visitors will be served underground while the collections are to be h oused on the u p p e r eleven floors o f the four tow ers. Architect Perrault, until n o w relatively u n ­ know n even in France but om nipresent at the conference, defended his plan w ith consider­ LarryR . Oberg is director o f libraries a t A lb io n College, A lbion, M ichigan J u n e 1 9 9 2 / 3 9 5 A m odel sh ow in g the new Très Grande Bibliothèque o f France and its four-tower design. able Gallic flair. His overarching task, as he phrased it, w as to achieve a balance betw een m onum entality and humanity. The container he has created will not only house and cel­ ebrate the cultural patrim ony of France, but also serve as a functioning and freely acces­ sib le lib rary a n d as th e principal node in an evolv­ ing national an d interna­ tional information network. Perrault noted that the new library is at the heart of a m a jo r u r b a n r e n e w a l project and that an entirely n ew neighborhood will be c o n stru c te d a ro u n d a n d c o o r d i n a t e d w ith it. Perrault also em phasized that the library, rivaling in scale the Palais Royal and the Place de la Concorde, will introduce much- n eed ed o p en space in Paris. The rather thankless task of explaining the organization o f the new library fell to Gérard Grunberg, head of library management, w ho em phasized that w hile the new Bibliothèque de France will inherit most o f the collections and functions of the old Bibliothèque Nationale, its mission is not limited to serving scholarship narrowly defined. The new library will be open to a broader public, a function that challenges French librarians to reconcile their strong traditional heri­ tage-preservation tendencies with “the democratic dem ands for op en access” favored by their so­ cialist go v ern m en t sp o n so rs. To rise to its charge, the new library will offer tw o physi­ cally separate and conceptually distinct collec­ tions; the first, developed to research level and restricted to bona fide researchers, will consist o f th e s u p p l e m e n t e d c o lle c tio n s o f th e Bibliothèque Nationale; the second, developed to a strong study level, will be op en to stu­ dents and the general public, categories o f as­ piring readers that were never received with no­ ticeable warmth at the BN’s rue de Richelieu site. G runberg m ade it clear that the French take their preservation obligations seriously. In ad­ dition to in-house ateliers, a high-technology conservation center designed to serve the needs o f the new library, is now under construction outside Paris at Mame-la-Vallée, a location per­ haps m ore familiar to North Americans as the hom e of EuroDisneyland. Imaging is a primary concern to the French in that it serves the new democratic ideal of making texts available to the broadest possible public, while at the same time protecting their original containers from sticky populist fingers. The new preservation facility includes a w ide range of reproduction services w ith photographic, micrographic, and electronic digitization capabilities. Preservation plans call for the deacidi­ fication of som e 2.6 million volumes, the production of 500 million microform im­ ages, and the rebinding of one million volumes. G runberg expects that as m any as 200,000 vol­ umes will have been digi­ tized by the 1995 library o p en in g date an d plans call for the digitization of all te x ts , im a g e s , a n d sounds contained in the library w ithin a reasonable period o f time. Digi­ tization, G runberg suggests, will ultimately re­ place microfiche as the preferred storage and preservation medium, although other French panelists m ade it clear that the library also re­ mains com m itted to the preservation of the docum ent in the form originally chosen by the author and the publisher. Finally, G runberg assured the audience that French concerns that the b ook storage areas in the tow ers could becom e “solar furnaces” in the hot sum m er m onths will not materialize. The stack areas will b e m aintained at a constant 18 degrees centigrade through an efficient combination of air- conditioning and wooden shutters that will close automatically during the day. The daunting prospect of moving a 10-mil- lio n -v o lu m e co llectio n o f b o o k s from th e Bibliothèque Nationale to the new Library of France has b een a source of great concern in France, both to preservation-m inded librarians and to scholars w ho fear they will be deprived of n eed ed research materials for long periods of time. French panelists assured the audience that legions of experts will move the books with ex­ treme care and that no book will be unavailable for more than two weeks. Jacqueline Sanson, head librarian of the BN's main reading room, noted that the move presents librarians not only with cleaning and preservation opportunities, but also w ith the opportunity to: • consolidate a collection that since 1934 has b een split betw een the rue de Richelieu site and a rem ote storage facility at Versailles; • store books and periodicals in the same 3 9 6 / C&RL N e w s location (their separation w as a serious com ­ plaint o f scholars in the past); and • m odify the 23-letter classification code designed by Nicolas Clément for the Royal Li­ brary that has b een in use since 1688. In addition, the fam ous reserve collection of rare and precious books will be ex p an d ed from approxim ately 50,000 to perhaps as many as 150,000 volum es in the n ew facility. Plans for the autom ation o f the Library o f France w ere discussed by Alain Giffard, head of information technologies. LĬnformatique, the French conceptualization of library autom ation, will be m uch in evidence and serve a w ide range o f internal processes and public func- Eitheryou are going to buildpretty buildings with a computer add-on, or y o u are going to jo in the world system. tions. Building o n the G eac system currently in use at the Bibliothèque Nationale and supported by an initial governm ent grant o f 50 million francs, the new library will be equipped with a vast number of sophisticated public workstations. Giffard is currently wrestling with a choice between accepting potentially limited but currently available proprietary workstations or risking the more flex­ ible and sophisticated “equipped-desk” concept that accommodates the use of laptops and, one might add, introduces potential security risks and other problems. In any case, w hatever form the w ork­ stations take, researchers will b e able to con­ struct personalized catalogs tailored to their in­ dividual needs, within w hich they will move about freely and call up the full text of many docu­ ments for annotation, manipulation, printing, and downloading. At a technical panel discussion, questions w ere raised concerning the d ep th o f French commitment to the emerging international net­ works. (“Either you are going to build pretty buildings w ith a com puter add-on, or you are going to join the w orld system.”) Giffard noted that, in fact, short-range plans place emphasis upo n local French networks. The Bibliothèque de France will serve as the nerve center o f a national network; maintain links w ith the multi­ p u rp o se French netw ork, Minitel; an d w ork tow ard the completion and online availability o f the French national union catalog. Closer link­ age w ith international networks is a long-range goal. Participants suggested that the need for scientific information extends beyond the el­ egant glass walls of the Bibliothèque de France an d ev en b eyond France’s national borders. Indeed, the dem ands o f scholarship are likely to m ove the French tow ard closer electronic ties w ith the rest of the world, but for the m o­ ment, the French forms rem ain nationalist. T he conference w as chaired by D orothy G regor, n ew University o f California, B erke­ ley, librarian, w ho co p ed ably w ith low-tech so u n d an d other systems failures w hile k eep ­ ing the participants on schedule. Emm anuel Le R oy L a d u rie , c h ie f a d m i n is tr a t o r o f th e Bibliothèque Nationale, professor at the Collège de France, and historian o f note, w as a ubiqui­ tous a n d bem used presence. His talk entitled “T h e D aily Life o f a n A dm inistrator o f the B ibliothèque N ationale” delivered more than the title prom ised. Le Roy Ladurie w ent to som e pains to assure the Americans in the audience that during his tenure at the BN he has m ade every effort to im plem ent the Anglo-Saxon ef­ ficiency that w e tell him is lacking there. For exam ple, Americans com plain frequently that the single public telephone in the entry hall is e n p a n n e , o r som ehow malfunctioning. Mon­ sieur Le Roy Ladurie w ishes it to be know n w idely that he has resolved this annoying tech­ nical problem quite simply by giving a coin to his assistant every morning w ith w hich to check its p ro p e r functioning. The academics on the panel, perhaps carried away by the grandeur of the project, provided a sweeping context within which it may be viewed and evaluated. The construction of the new library, conference organizers Howard Bloch and Carla Hesse suggested, is an historically pivotal moment, comparable to the development of the codex in the 4th century, or the printed book during the Renaissance. UC-Berkeley's Roger Hahn suggested that the project will modify the ways in which w e think, conceive of the world, and construct our re­ ality. In any context, however, it is clear that the French are building much more than just a library. How well their project balances the needs of re­ searchers against a commitment to “democratic” access to information, how well and in what form it preserves the French cultural heritage, and how deeply it commits France to the emerging world­ wide information network, have profound impli­ cations for all of us. A uthor’s note: For more information about the Bibliothèque de France or French library autom a­ tion, contact Jack Kessler, University o f California, Berkeley, a t e-mail: kessler@well.sf.ca.us or phone (415) 2825850. ■ mailto:kessler@well.sf.ca.us