Dear Bruno Racine,
Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends,
It is with special emotion that I celebrate today, here and with you, the 20the anniversary of the inauguration of this magnificent building of the National Library of France.
A place that President François Mitterrand, placing culture at the centre of the republican project, had thought as the beating heart of our democracy.
He described libraries, a melting pot of our common values, as one of the true instruments of the right of peoples and individuals to know", “a weapon in the fight for freedom”[1], had wanted to make the BNF a extensive public library "[1].
20 years later, in the wake of the terrible challenge launched to our Republic by the January attacks, this ambition resonates more strongly than ever.
In a society faced with the challenge of the values of freedom, tolerance and secularism, libraries, first and foremost that which François Mitterrand had thought was “the largest and most modern in the world”have a central role to play.
Temples of freedom of thought and publication, they are places of sharing, places of encounter, debate and dialogue, depositories of a people’s memory and of the diversity of its thought. The four open books that respond to each other, designed by Dominique Perrault, remind us of this role of libraries in the service of exchange and tolerance.
I would first like to commend the BnF’s commitment to serve the values of our Republic in the context of mobilizing the cultural sector to provide a response to the profound crisis that our country is going through, attacked at the heart of its principles. Notably through the educational resources made available to teachers following the reflections led by intellectuals and academics, including Mona Ozouf, a great republican figure, and the tribute paid to the press drawings in the Julien Cain alley, inaugurated last week, in the presence of the families and relatives of the cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo murdered.
We are all deeply convinced that the response to this terrible challenge to our Republic is above all cultural.
That is why the BnF, like all our cultural institutions, must redouble its efforts to open its doors to all our fellow citizens and better take into account their practices and usages.
This requires a reflection on the development of access and the diversification of audiences, as well as digital technology, which reinvigorates the democratic ambition of everyone’s access to works of the spirit.
These are issues at the very foundation of the project conceived by François Mitterrand, who wanted the BnF “available to all”, [uses] the most modern data transmission technologies”.[1].
As its inspiration intended, this library, which is of course the library of researchers and the preservation of the priceless collections of our history, must also be the library of all our fellow citizens. This is a major challenge for this “temple of knowledge”, this “mecca of scholarship” that impresses.
It is in order to meet this challenge and this ambition of openness that the library of the upper garden, which welcomes 500,000 readers each year in conditions of very high quality, was created.
It is also at the service of this openness that the policy of accessibility to digital data, the policy of welcoming young people or their families and work with local actors – the neighbouring University, the City of Paris, cultural actors – to anchor the BNF in its territory.
The Richelieu site will offer tremendous opportunities in terms of openness. This is an opportunity not to be missed. By reinventing its historic site, I hope that the BnF can offer, in partnership with the National Institute of the History of Art, a space focused on the transmission and sharing of knowledge and our heritage with new services offered to readers of course. Whether it makes this site resolutely open to the city, its visitors – tomorrow visitors to the Louvre or the nearby Museum of Decorative Arts will be able to enrich their discovery with the BNF’s masterpieces gallery for example. A place also open to groups of young people in school time or outside school time.
At the time of this reflection on new services and of this dynamic engaged to renew and diversify the public of the BnF, one of the levers -this is not the only- can be the tariff lever: I wish that you can, on this subject too, make me proposals by the summer.
The challenge of attractiveness and adaptation to the expectations of audiences is not unique to the BnF. It must be at the heart of thinking about the future of all public reading libraries. They never fulfil their democratic mission as well as when they adapt, both in terms of the services they offer and their accessibility, to the needs of the population.
With 15 million users and 16,000 reading points across the country, libraries are the first cultural network in the territories, and the first local public service. It is a tremendous resource for everyone’s access to culture and knowledge.
But a public service is only effective if it meets the needs of the public.
Today, municipal libraries open an average of 14 hours a week, and when they are open longer, it is often at times when people are working. But meeting expectations also means being open when the French are available: during the meridian break, in the evening, on Saturday or Sunday.
Successful experiments in the public reading network show the relevance of an action on opening hours. However, they are not generalized because they involve heavy organizational tasks, with staff, with elected officials, with the quality of services that can be offered in a global way.
To continue the national reflection on this issue after the work of December 8, I decided to entrust Senator Sylvie Robert with a mission to adapt the opening hours of public libraries to the rhythm of life of the population. Based on a consultation of many local elected officials in charge of this policy and professionals, I expect from Sylvie Robert concrete proposals to accompany and support communities in their public reading policy.
Being accessible to all, reaching all audiences, cannot be done without developing an ambitious digital policy, closer to the practices of our fellow citizens.
I would like to commend the remarkable work of the BnF in this regard, which has been at the forefront of innovation for 20 years: this is where the challenge was greatest and the most spectacular results were achieved.
The Gallica Digital Library has established itself in ten years as one of the largest digital libraries in the world, with more than 3 million online documents including more than 500,000 books, and no less than 14 million visitors last year.
The BnF has also become the memory of the Internet, which it ensures the legal deposit for the French pages.
It now makes available hundreds of thousands of works that have become unavailable as part of the Relire project.
To go further, we must now think about the enrichment of the online resources proposed the BnF. Digital lending is a major innovation that increases the reach of libraries tenfold. The National Library of France cannot stay away from this evolution.
To be relevant, such an approach will have to be complementary and not concurrent with that undertaken by territorial and higher education libraries, as evidenced by the signing of the 12 recommendations for digital library lending last December.
So I would like you to give me some suggestions in the coming months on the role that BnF could play in developing access to remote resources.
The BnF has made the digital shift.
By playing a key role in the dissemination of metadata as part of the policy of opening up public cultural data, it has become one of the department’s digital spearheads.
I hope that the BnF can put all its expertise and experience at the service of the new digital strategy of the Ministry of Culture and Communication.
While many public institutions, like the BnF, have successfully seized the digital challenge, It seems to me essential today to formalize a comprehensive and coherent digital strategy for all operators who come under the Ministry of Culture and Communication.
In 15 years, the Ministry of Culture has accomplished huge projects of digitization and the teams of all our public institutions have had at heart to set up the conditions for the digitization of our heritage. Today we must make these riches known to the general public. Digital technology must be one of the levers of the dissemination of culture to the greatest number of people in all territories.
Also, this digital strategy will be orchestrated by a digital cell being set up within the ministry. It will be resolutely user-oriented and rooted in the digital ecosystem.
It is my ambition to be able to federate the initiatives and actions currently at work in the institutions and in the ministry and to place in a collective dynamic the provision of public cultural data and content, with respect for copyright, as well as the continuation of the major project of digitalisation.
This strategy should also make it possible to define legal principles that can guide operators in their relationship with major digital players, propose a mapping of existing or desirable digital skills, to promote and promote digital cultural knowledge. Digital openness must be done with confidence, so that each institution of the Ministry, with its specificity, its professions and its conservation expertise, find the best way to showcase and disseminate the cultural and artistic riches that are the goods of all our fellow citizens
I know I can count on the BnF to be one of the driving forces behind this ambition.
To conclude, I would like to pay tribute to all the artisans of the creation of this magnificent library alongside François Mitterrand, to his successive leaders, many of whom are among us tonight with an emotional thought for those who have left us. I also want to salute all the staff who work daily to make the BnF the “extensive public library” dreamed by François Mitterrand.
Thanks to you, in two decades, the National Library of France has become one of the largest modern libraries of the 21st century, following in the footsteps of a long tradition and a glorious past.
Thanks to you, it is every day a little more the library of all the French, a digital library closest to the customs of our fellow citizens, which will give reason to Pierre Nora who described it in 1988 as follows: This library is not like the others, its functioning engages the heart of the national culture ».
Thank you.
[1] 14 July 1988, the construction and fitting out of one or the largest and most modern library in the world....(who) must cover all fields of knowledge, be available to all, use the most modern data transmission technologies, be able to be consulted remotely and get in touch with other European libraries»