FYIFrance: France on the Web -- recommended starting points There is so much -- perhaps too much -- excitement on the nets now about the WorldWideWeb / W3 / Mosaic / "l'hypertexte" etc., that some particular attention to W3 resources in France might be interesting here. A longer list of what is available in library and information W3 resources in France is given in the "French Online Libraries" list which appears here every six months. The effort below is to go for depth rather than breadth -- filtering, maybe -- to delve into a few of the current W3 efforts in France in a little more detail, perhaps to encourage less francophilic or less networking - philic readers of this to take a look at them. Four W3 resources in France are reviewed here, chosen for their interest and usefulness to library and information workers. There are other wonderful resources mounted now on French W3 servers -- Nicholas Pioch's remarkable and now award - winning WebLouvre, for example (http://mistral.enst.fr), which gives you both Paris tours and online reproductions of Old Masters -- but the concern this time is not so much with information as it is with the exercise of finding it in France. 1) GRENET / GREnobleNET -- http://www.grenet.fr Grenoble has been a center of scientific research and of information networking development in France since the 1960's. GRENET / GREnobleNET servers have been among the most accessible and the most active in the country's networking; the GRENET gopher -- gopher.grenet.fr (now being discontinued) -- was for several years the largest and most complete point of access for a foreigner wishing to reach information online in France. The GRENET gopher recently was supplanted by an equally - excellent GRENET W3 homepage, the text of which appears as follows: (very pretty inline picture of the Alps) Bienvenue sur le serveur WWW du CICG a` _GRENOBLE_ Ce Serveur vous informe sur : Le Centre Interuniversitaire de Calcul de Grenoble l'Annuaire Universite's/Recherche de Grenoble Tous les serveurs d'information de Grenoble et sa re'gion. Le Re'seau Documentaire de Grenoble Les Nouveaute's sur le re'seau a` Grenoble ? Le cine'ma et d'autres manifestations culturelles La chaine TV Informatique "Computer Channel" Diffe'rents services du Re'seau (gopher, ftp, archie, news, liste de distribution). Les autres serveurs WWW (en France et dans le monde) 2) RENNES / Universite' de Rennes -- http://www.univ-rennes1.fr The University of Rennes has assembled archives, and a W3 homepage, which are of particular interest to librarians and to anyone interested in information work per se in France. Rennes houses archives of many of the numerous and growing library and networking e - conferences in France, such as BIBLIO- FR, which very usefully may be examined via search - strings: increasingly, as e - conferences improve in quality and their archives grow in quantity, such searching is becoming the single most effective technique for getting and staying current with an online information topic. Rennes e - conference archives, and their searching, of course are available from other servers such as that at GRENET, via the many miracles of W3 and hypertext. Rennes has, however, assembled a clear and concise although comprehensive homepage which, like the homepage at GRENET, greatly enhances access: Le Centre de REssources Informatiques (CRI) de l'Universite' de Rennes 1 est heureux de vous accueillir sur son serveur WWW et vous donne acce`s aux information suivantes: L'Universite' de Rennes 1 Le CRI Le re'seau Ouest Recherche Le Comite' Re'seau des Universite's Le reste du monde then, under "Le reste du monde" (http://www.univ-rennes1.fr/RESTE/reste.html), (very pretty picture of "le reste du monde", taken from somewhere high in the sky above Rennes) Quoi d'autre sur l'Internet? (various -- omitted here) listes de diffusions and finally, under "listes de diffusions" (http://www.univ-rennes1.fr/RESTE/listes-de-diffusion.html), Les listes de diffusion francophones Le CATALOGUE Les ARCHIVES de quelques listes: recherche chronologique ou par mots - cle's Les ABONNES de quelques listes Pour publier une liste dans le catalogue des listes francophones Un catalogue de serveurs de listes franc,ais Pour demander la cre'ation d'une liste de diffusion Les listes de diffusion internationales recherche alphabe'tique recherche par mots - cle's exprime's en anglais 3) CULTURE / Ministe`re de la Culture -- http://www.culture.fr One great difference between France and many other countries -- between France and the US, at any rate -- is the great emphasis which the French place upon "culture", and the great extent of their central government's involvement in it. At a time when the "culture" establishment in the US is largely being dismantled, in fact, it perhaps is interesting for US librarians and information workers to take another look at French concerns with "la patrimoine culturelle", particularly in its online and official manifestation. The server at the French Ministry of Culture contains many things of interest to any W3 wanderer. It is here that one finds, for example, the text and images which so quickly made the recent prehistoric Combe d'Arc cave discoveries available to the world (see "FYIFrance EXTRA: the new French cave paintings, already online!" of January 25). It appears that various imaging projects from French Museums and other sources likewise are destined for mounting, soon, on the Ministry server. For now, there already are resources in libraries and particularly in archives which may be of great interest to the waiting W3 world (or there will be -- this week the server is being re - constructed): the Ministry's homepage -- Le Ministe`re de la culture et de la francophonie Nous reorganisons notre serveur. Void ici pour les peintures de la grotte de vallon pont d'arc Our server is being reorganized. Please look here for the cave paintings Le serveur du ministe`re Le sie`cle des lumie`res dans la peinture des muse'es de France. The age of enlightenment in the paintings of France's national museums. The prix de Rome contest in paintings. 4) The Centre Pompidou, including the BPI -- http://www.cnac-gp.fr (Pretty nice inline graphic of the Pompidou's irrepressible architecture) Centre National d'Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou 19 rue Beaubourg, 75004 Paris (France) English version Vous avez acce`s aux rubriques suivantes: Qu'est ce que le Centre Georges Pompidou Acce`s, horaires, tarifs Calendrier quotidien pour Mars 1995 Programmation 1994-1995 <> Nouvelle revue interdisciplinaire: appel a` re'actions (deutsch, english, espan~ol, italiano) ... et a` d'autres informations et services connexes: Muse'es, expositions et ressources the'a^trales sur l'Internet Le calendrier Arts Deadlines L'Ircam L'Ecole Nationale Supe'rieure des Beaux-Arts Dans le cadre des actions du Centre Pompidou et de l'Ircam dans les domaines de l'exclusion et de la solidarite': Sida et VIH - manifestations, informations et ressources General filtering observations: the increasing importance of homepage design One interesting aspect of information access which becomes apparent in examining the Web is the increasing importance to it of graphic design. If the Mosaic approach is fated to become the standard -- it isn't yet clear that it will, nor is it yet clear that its becoming so would be a good thing -- at least this would mean that the technology will have become that much more standardised: that much less necessary to worry about, for the average network user who remains un - fascinated by technology. At the same time, the miracles of the Web and of hypertext mean that increasingly all sorts of networked information may be found anywhere by anyone online: cross - references, "links", and so on increasingly ensure that you can get to it from location "x" if it is at "y", and even if it is at "z" or for that matter anywhere else. The organization of all of this cross - linkage is not obvious; it is not obvious that it currently has any organization at all. But then that is job security at least for librarians in the coming century. It also provides a job for interface designers: the appearance of the Web homepage -- its typeface, its colors, its arrangement, all the cosmetic effects which have preoccupied book designers and printers for centuries -- increasingly is becoming as important as its content, as the content is being offered, cross - linked, by everyone else's homepage. So there may be hope for the printing arts yet. Anglo - American users and designers might also note the presence of "English language version" options on the homepages in France: multi - lingual access still isn't often an option on an "anglo - saxon" homepage -- this will become a problem as their authors try to offer them to the rapidly - growing user bases in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere. Bonne polyglotte / hypertextuelle route! *** FYIFrance e - newsletter ISSN 1071 - 5916 * | FYIFrance is a monthly electronic newsletter, | 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 FYIFrance 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 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. FYIFrance may be found via gopher to infolib.berkeley.edu 72 and gopher.well.sf.ca.us , and it is in various online archives: the easiest to use is the PACS-L archive, reached via telnet to a.cni.org , login brsuser . 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