See also: BPI

The Public library of information , also known under the Initials BPI or Bpi , is principal the public Bibliothèque Parisian. Constituted in the form of national public corporation, it has the statute of organization associated with the Center Georges-Pompidou, in which it is physically established.

History

The project of a large library of public reading in the center of Paris, intended to unchoke the National library had taken consistency with the decision to transfer the central Markets to Rungis, in 1963 - 1965. The general administrator of the National library, Etienne Dennery, had suggested benefitting from the site released to establish this equipment.

An inter-ministerial committee for the public reading was created in 1966 under the impulse of Georges Pompidou, which attached a great importance to this stake, and the new library was envisaged in the 5th Plan. It was to offer: 1300 places: 1000000 of volumes and: 2000 periodicals out of 11000 m2, and being open to all. The program was approved by the Minister for State education, Alain Peyrefitte, the December 11th 1967. The October 24th 1968, under the impulse of Rene Capitant, the Council of Paris fixed the site of the public library on the plate Beaubourg, property of the Town of Paris. An architectural project, which envisaged the construction of several buildings in the middle of green areas, was worked out by the architect Bernard Faugeron.

According to Jean-Pierre Seguin, at the time conservative as a chief at the National library and which was to become the first director of Bpi: “Its vocation will be that of a library of information and the composition of its funds will be directed towards the not specialized general study. The collections will interest all the disciplines and will relate to the foreign production as well as the French production. ” With the crisis, then largely recognized and denounced reading, which appeared in particular by the decline of the practice of the reading, Jean-Pierre Seguin proposed to answer with equipment which would have vocation not the reading but information. For him, the library is a “center living of culture and information” whose user, provided with all the means necessary to be directed, must be able to make his choice with complete freedom, and who does not have to guide the reader towards such or such type of work. The new establishment, written Jean-Pierre Seguin, “will be intended for information more than for the simple reading, this information then consisting in making it possible to the users to have an up to date held inventory of the funds of the other libraries, to analyze the contents of the acquired documents, selective bibliographies, and of a service of answers per telephone”.

Following the decision taken in December 1969 by the president of the Republic, Georges Pompidou, to create on the Beaubourg plate a new museum of modern art, it was decided, in February 1970, to join together the two projects within the same cultural equipment. In the design of president Pompidou, the library was to attract visitors who could then discover the other cultural activities suggested.

From the start, the new equipment was highly criticized by the librarians, who disputed the absence of loan of the books like, more deeply, the concept even of library of information, turning the back on the traditional policy of development of the public reading.

The new library wanted to be a pilot establishment, window of all the innovations information public reading. In addition to the free-access to the collections of printed and periodicals, it was to propose to the readers to reach, under the same conditions, with new technologies, i.e., at the time of its opening, audio-visual documents. Jean-Pierre Seguin, his founder, had also wanted that Bpi was the first library of France to be had a computing system; moreover, in manner then visionary, because the technique available was not yet with the height of this ambition, this computing system was to be not management tools with the service of the librarians, but research tools with the service of the readers.

Missions and organization

Bpi shows certain characteristics which distinguish it from the majority of the others public libraries:
  • national public corporation : it is not a Public library, but a national public corporation under supervision of the ministry in charge of the Culture (it is a “national library”, as the decree indicates it which created it);
  • not of loan : it does not practice the loan in residence and its collections are reserved for the consultation on the spot;
  • not of store : all its collections are in free access, Bpi having no store of storage. Of this fact it was pionnière in the introduction in France of the weeding, i.e. because of as many withdrawing each year of the collections documents as it returns from there;
  • documentary gate in line : it gives access since spring 2006 starting from its Web site and in its public spaces, with a documentary gate, which makes it possible to seek its documents in way set of themes and gathers the accesses to its various databases;
  • mission of national co-operation : she also exerts a mission of national co-operation. Upon the departure, Bpi was to draw up a catalog of the funds of the other French libraries and to update it in real-time, which could then be used by other libraries. This project was born never, but it illustrated the vocation of “network head” that Jean-Pierre Seguin had wished to give to Bpi.

Bpi offers services of self-training, at the beginning media library of Langue S, which propose to the visitor to learn only the language from its choice, and which gained a great success.

The statute of Bpi is fixed by the decree n° 76-82 of January 27th, 1976. She is managed by a board of directors whose president is of right the president of the Georges-Pompidou Center, and is directed by a director named by decree of the President of the Republic on a proposal from the minister for the Culture and after opinion of the president of the Center.

Directors of Bpi

References

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