The BnF Digital Strategy Bibliothèque nationale de France Denis Bruckmann, Head of collections, Deputy general director

Octobre The BnF digital strategy : A BnFshort fact file Created during the fifteen century : 14 departments of collections A new site built in 1995 (F.MITTERRAND) Around 15 millions of printed materials (books, serial publications, newspapers) Around 20 millions of special collections (prints, photographs, drawings, maps, manuscripts, music…) Collections based on the Depot legal and acquisitions people at 7 sites 210 millions of euros (annual budget) Public : 1.5 million per year in reading rooms and exhibitions and 12 millions on the web site

Octobre The BnF digital strategy : A long story Digitization conveived from the beginning of the New Library (Nineties) Digitization applied to the different activities of the library : preservation and diffusion (virtual visits, virtual exhibitions, commercial pictures databank,…) Digitization as a source of the documentation : electronic native documents, depot legal of the web.

Octobre The BnF digital strategy : The early years ( ) Building a reference library of books and images : Gallica Main characteristics : french materials, public domain, page mode (90% of the collection) Annual increasing of around titles Selection criteria : fragile, useful, rare, precious, symbolic materials A large success : visits per month and 1.5 millions items read monthly

Octobre The BnF digital strategy : 2004 : The Google announcement and the BnF’s President reaction The main questions : Is it possible to let the cultural heritage digitization to the private entreprise ? Are the searchengines interested in cultural diffusion or advertisement receipts ? Do the webengines respect multicultural realities, author’s rights, academic values ? Do the searchengines care about long term preservation ?

Octobre The BnF digital strategy : The mass digitization, chapter one ( ) documents per year Special budgets delivered by the Ministry of Culture (8 millions euros per year and 12 people more) Page mode and text mode Evolutions in selection and realization process - From selection item by item to « mass selection » - From control item to item to « automatic control » Other programs : - Newspapers - Audiovisual materials

Octobre The BnF digital strategy : Some other evolutions Undercopyright materials experimentation with a business model (today, books) Mass preservation on a digital repository Start of the web’s depot legal (collecting and consulting) Web 2.0 evolutions on Gallica interface Emerging networks : Europeana, European digital Library (EDL), Network of the "French speaking countries National libraries“ (

Octobre The BnF digital strategy : The mass digitization, chapter two ( ) Current documentation, rare books and special collections More collaborative - national and international programs - evolution of Gallica towards a National digital library

Octobre The BnF digital strategy and beyond : New times, new questions How to reduce the cost of documents selection ? Is the universal and complete digital library possible ? Which relationships with private companies ? Which part of its collections each library wants to keep exclusive ? Which articulation between the different Libraries (Gallica, Europeana, WDL, Google,…) Beyond digitization, which strategy for users Help, support and mediation ?