the French National Library and more

You may have the impression that I'm a technophile, but I'm actually an appropriate-technology-phile.  People, paper and pens can be appropriate for some activities, for example, voting.

Here's a passage about the Bibliothèque nationale de France that I enjoyed from Adam Gopnik's essay "Lessons from Things, Christmas Journal 3", in his book Paris to the Moon.

Then you search, among consoles set off near the walls, for an empty, operating computer terminal on which to make your book requests.  Most of the terminals are out of order, and when you insert your identity card, they sigh and say that they are initializing.  After fifteen minutes you give up and walk up and down the great hall, looking for a terminal that works.  When you find one, you can penetrate the catalog fairly quickly; then you claim the page and demand the book; the computer registers that you have made the demand and tells you to go sit back down.  The entire library is, in principle, served by, or subject to, the same vast, single computer system, which knows who you are, where you are, what you're doing, and what you want, can track you from visit to visit, and anticipate your interests, etc.  This of course means in practice that any tiny bug in one part of the system destroys the entire operation of the library.  The latest bugs are posted on photocopied sheets Scotch-taped to the terminals: Please, don't ask to "resee" your list, they say, just ask to "revise" it, etc.

...

On the desks there is a single red light that is supposed to illuminate when your books arrive, but these lights have never been known to work.  Or, rather, they have been occasionally known to work.  So you have to get up regularly and check your computer terminal again, to see what's up.  The light may be off because the books haven't arrived yet, and it may be off because it's not working.  ...

It's quite a long essay, covering diverse topics, and I recommend it.  I was interested to read in it about the exhibits in the Jardin des Plantes, since I have recently been there (I photographed some of the buildings, but I didn't go in, I just had time to walk in the garden).  I suppose I have progressed, considering that when I was there in 2004, I didn't even know there was a natural history museum at all.

More about this book

Chapter One, courtesy of the New York Times

Excerpt chapter "A Tale of Two Cafés", courtesy Random House

ISBN-13: 978-0375758232

Photos from the Jardin des Plantes

2007:

2004: