La Vie à Paris: Le Bon Week-end

Yesterday I went to a flea market in the 18e arrondissement. It went on forever. I expected to see second-hand and was surprised to see how much new merchandise was for sale. As I got further from the entrance, the new gave way to the old. And at the far reaches antique shops, some quite expensive, replaced the second–hand stalls.

Today I went to the Marché Bastille outdoor market. So much beautiful food, and all looking so much better than what’s available at the little supermarket around the corner! Stalls selling nothing but oysters! I spent €45,08. I bought my alimentation (groceries) for the week. I hope I didn’t buy too much – three peaches, three pears, five figs and eight bananas; two cheeses – a camembert and three small crottin de chevre. I’m buying cheeses I never ate before and keeping a list. I’ve had camembert, but not camembert made with unpasteurized milk because you can’t get it in the U.S. When I ordered it, the seller poked it with his finger. I don’t know if he was testing it for ripeness or showing me that it was ripe. Mine is definitely ready to eat. I could smell it on the subway on the way home.

I also stocked up on some menu items I can reheat during the week – fully cooked (if I understood his French correctly) pickled pork ribs, lasagna and stuffed squid. Stuffed with what, I have no idea. I didn’t buy vegetables because I don’t want to take the time to cook. I noticed that at the market they were selling fully cooked beet roots. Perhaps I should have bought one or two. Oh well, bon appétit!

I took the Lonely Planet Guide literary walking tour of the Latin Quarter today. Not being a Hemingway fan, I really didn’t care about all the bars where Papa got sloshed, but other than that it was pretty great. I saw places where James Joyce, George Orwell, Ezra Pound, Henry Miller and Kathryn Anne Porter lived. But what was greatest was seeing where Pablo Picasso painted Guernica, where Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir hung out, where Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas held their literary salons, and the hotel where Oscar Wilde died. Although not of literary significance, 56 rue Jacob also was on the tour. That’s where David Harley, George III’s representative, met with Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and John Hay on September 3, 1783 to sign the Treaty of Paris recognizing American independence. This evening I went to a concert and mass at St. Eustache, the church with the largest organ in Paris. When they pull out all the stops, that thing really wails. Stirs the emotions. Amen.

Paris is expensive. A glass of beer on rue Jacob cost me €9.50 (about $14.70 at today’s exchange rate), and it wasn’t even a big glass. And this evening I went to the laverie (laundramat) for the second time. A small load of laundry cost €6.50 (a little more than $10.00) to wash and dry. Restaurants, bars, cafés, brasseries and salons du thé charge different prices depending on where you sit (or stand) and what time of day you go. I probably sat in the most expensive place at the most expensive time. Ate the squid tonight. Heated it in the microwave because I can’t get the oven to work. Not a problem. Delicious.

When is a Stadtbucherei a Bücherhallen?

When you’re in Hamburg, of course. Hamburg claims to be the only library in Germany to use this word. OK, but a library is a library is a library.

Hamburg is a city of 1.7 million people, 15 to 20% of whom are immigrants. It is a major port, not only for Germany but all of Europe. It also is the German home of Airbus, the Franco-German aircraft company with French operations in Toulouse.

The central library is housed on two floors of rented space in a building that was a parcel distribution center for the German post office. The library didn’t want to move into the building, but the landlord made a very attractive offer because he hoped the library would provide an anchor for the neighborhood. The landlord’s hopes have been realized and the library is expanding to a third floor.

The library has a budget of €30.8 million, and a staff of 491 (400 full-time and 91 part-time). It has a turnover rate of 7.8 and circulated 12.82 million items last year. It collects in 27 languages and offers 120 language courses. It has issued 141,782 paid cards, but admits that with RFID it cannot control who uses the cards. It hires six to eight librarian trainees each year for whom it offers a three-year training program. In the second year of the program the trainees staff HOEB4U, the libraries telephone, email and virtual reference service.

The library owns 14,000 DVDs and 20,000 CDs. It subscribes to 7,000 periodicals. It offers free wifi, for which users don’t need library cards. Like other German libraries, it charges to reserve books and to check out best sellers. Reserves cost €1.50 and best sellers cost €2.50. The number of best sellers the library gets depends on the books position on the Der Spiegel best seller list. The vendor processes the books for the library.

Having worked in dozens of organizations during my checkered career(s), I have seen first-hand how the leader can affect the culture of an organization, and I think the director of the Bücherhallen Hamburg must be doing something right. Many staff members talked about how the director encourages them to try new things and embrace change; others demonstrated it. I’m sorry we didn’t get to meet her.

The name Bücherhallen is not the only unique thing about the Hamburg library. It has a separate “leisure library,” and its teen center is housed in a separate building. It runs the libraries in the city’s prisons. It is responsible for the city’s school libraries. It has a chat-bot named Ina who brings people to content on its website. It provides audio for the blind and sign language for the hearing impaired on its website. It has an automated book return and sorting system that handles 10,000 check-ins a day at a rate of 1,000 books an hour. In the early morning and late evening hours the system is used to handle reserves and new books. It has a soundproof room in the children’s library that teachers love because, as our tour guide said, it gets the children “away from the hurry, the stress and the noise.” It also has an RFID machine in the children’s room for children to check out their materials themselves.

The Hamburg library works with the Federal office of Immigration and Refugees. It is trying to build a network for immigrant support “to make cultural and educational institutions accessible” and “to help them learn the German language.” It holds German language sessions in the library for immigrants who know some German but need to practice speaking. The sessions are staffed by 60 volunteer discussion facilitators and the library is looking for more volunteers "with similar immigration experience." Recognizing that human contact is another service libraries provide, the Hamburg library has built a volunteer staff of medianboten (item deliverers)who deliver library materials to older, handicapped and immobile customers with whom they spend time reading and talking.

The Hamburg library has an IT staff of three, but 17 people have access to the content management system and can put content on the library’s web page. The library has retained a children’s writer to write and review content for the children’s page. The website’s pages are color coordinated. The main pages are blue. The HOEB4U pages are red, and the children’s page are yellow.

From the HOEB4U page customers can request that their question be answered by a librarian from any one of six Hamburg libraries, by choosing the library from a dropdown menu. This is a service the Hamburg library developed at no cost by working with five other libraries and using an open source ticket system.

The Lern- und Sprachzentrum (Learning and Language Center) at the Hamburg library is a work in progress. The library has adopted the Information Commons idea from English and American universities and hopes with the Center to apply the concept, including e-learning and chat rooms, to the public library setting. The Center provides self-learning, both on site and online, including language study.

DUBib in Wiesbaden, Germany, is the aggregator that provides electronic newspapers, magazines and journals to the Hamburg library. DUBib buys the media from the publishers and the Hamburg library, and 105 other German libraries, including Frankfurt and Munich, buy licenses from the publisher to use the media.

Self-learning or autoformation as the French call it appears to be a much more popular idea in German and French than in American public libraries. One of the most innovative ideas I learned in Hamburg had to do with the library’s online courses, which it obtains from Bipmedia, a German/Austrian firm that provides online training to such companies as SAP and BMW. The library asked Bipmedia, which had never worked with libraries, if it could be on its platform, but Bipmedia offered to create a platform for the library to host instead. The library now offers 102 courses in IT, languages, economics and other subjects and it has contracted with Bipmedia to sell this service to other libraries. The IT staff promoted the service at the recent Frankfurter Buchmesse (Frankfurt book fair, the world's largest trade fair for books, where Leipzig and Frankfurt signed on.

The Hamburg library’s eMedia offer includes eBooks, eAudios, eVideos and eMusic, and ePaper (newspapers, journals and magazines), which it obtains from DiViBib GmbH, Wiesbaden, Germany. DiViBib buys the media from the publishers. The Hamburg library and 105 other German libraries, including Bremen, Frankfurt, Cologne, Munich and the Association of Public Libraries in Berlin buy licenses to use the media from the publisher. See http://www.onleihe.net

The ePaper incudes Der Speigel, the German news magazine; four national daily newspapers and Manager Magazin and Wirtschafts Woche, two business magazines. Under terms of their contracts, the libraries can eloan Der Spiegel to only one customer at a time. When I used the temporary Hamburg library card I was given (good for 30 days) to download the 156-page four-color most recent edition of Manager Magazin in pdf format, I was told my loan period was one day, three hours and 13 minutes. For Wirtschafts Woche my loan period was one day three hours and nine minutes.When I requested Der Spiegel, I was put on a waiting list. I received an email a few days later telling me the magazine was available for me to download.

Customrs can also download eBooks to their Sony Reader for a limited time. For some reason, Amazon has not yet introduced the Kindle in Europe, but even if it had, the library could not offer downloads to the Kindle, because Kindle owners are required to obtain their eBooks from Amazon.


Beware of False Cognates
They can get you every time. Here are a few that can cause problems for librarians:

Medien is a German word that refers to any materials, whether in print or electronic format, that a library provides for its customers.

Numerization is a word the French often use when they speak English to mean digitization because numerization is the French word for digitization.

Alphatization is a word French and German librarians often use for literacy training when they speak English because alphabétizer in French and alphabeten in German mean to teach someone to read.

Organization and Efficiency in Bremen

Our first stop in Bremen was at a branch library in a neighborhood with a large population of “migrational background” from Turkey, North Africa and the Near East (a very Eurocentric term). The building was shaped like a ship and filled with light. It must look like a Danish library, because Barbara Lison, director of the Stadtbibliothek Bremen, told us it was designed by an architect who likes Danish libraries.

We were introduced to Frau Martin, the branch manager, and Frau Freihalt, the children’s librarian, who had recently returned from trips sponsored by the Goethe Institute to Ramallah and the Ivory Coast, where she gave presentations on children’s librarianship.

During their presentations, the librarians explained that kids 6-12 years of age are their hauptziele Groupe (target group). Frau Martin maintains that people don’t talk in families anymore. She said this is true of German families, but especially true of immigrant families. She and Frau Freihalt try to compensate for this Sprachlosigkeit by getting children to learn, have fun and speak.

Part of the library was designed as a café, but for cultural reasons the café was not successful. The space is now occupied by a community health center with which the library partners. When the library was opened 10 years ago, there were problems with teen groups, but the library now partners with a Turkish sports club, the local Folkshochschule and other groups and neighbors have adopted the library. It has become a meeting place for all kinds of community activities.


The second library we visited was on the second floor of a shopping center in a neighborhood where many people of German (rather than migrational?) background from the former Soviet Union live. According to the director, the circulation at this library nearly doubled when it moved from the basement of a neighboring building to the shopping center a few years ago.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Germany admitted nearly five million descendants of Germans who in the 19th century established colonies in what became the Soviet Union. Few of these people speak modern German and the unemployment rate among them is high. This group, the elderly and children are the local library’s target groups.


For five years the central library has been housed in a former police station that was built, according to our host, in 1908 with reparations for the Franco-Prussian War. The renovation was a challenge for architects who essentially built a five-story tower in what had been the courtyard of a three-story building with high ceilings. They connected the tower to the original building with bridges at the level where the floors of both are at the same height. It is at this level that most of the collection is housed.

The Lesegarten (Reading Garden) is under a glass roof in the courtyard behind the three-story addition. It is the only area of the library where customers are allowed to eat and drink.



French and German public libraries seem more like academic libraries and to offer more academic programs than public libraries in the United States. The Interconfessional talks about literature at the Bremen library is one example. The series was started in 2006 because the library believes that dialogue about religion is “an important pre-condition for peace between religions and peace in the world.” It uses fiction as a vehicle to enable dialogue by discussing the cultural, social and religious backgrounds of a novel’s characters. The program was organized in cooperation with the Evangelishes Bildungswerk Bremen (Bureau of Professional Training of the Protestant Church in Bremen) and the Muslimische Akademie Berlin (Muslim Academy Berlin). The Catholic Church was a sponsor, our guide explained. It withdrew due to lack of funds, but is, she was sure, with them in spirit.

The library holds six talks each year – three in the spring and three in the fall. The panel always includes a Jew, a Christian, a Buddhist and a Muslim. Representatives of other religions are invited to join as appropriate. One novel is presented at each session, where a professional actor or actress reads passages. The cost of each program is €4.00. Up to 50 people attend.

The Bremen library obtains its library materials, equipment and technology through ekz bibliotheksservice GmbH. Bremen paid €10,000 for the ekz platform, which it adapted to its website, and it pays ekz an annual licensing fee of €8,000. ekz is 65% privately owned and 35% publicly owned by Bremen and other libraries. The library-owners have greater influence than their share of ownership would imply, because some actions cannot be taken without their unanimous approval. ekz’s contracts with content providers often include restrictions on use.

All six libraries I have visited in Germany have fabulous music collections. They have thousands of CDs, which you can search by period, composer, artist, group or instrument, and there are probably a few other categories I’m forgetting about. They also have shelves and shelves of sheet music, and shelves and shelves of books about music. Many of these libraries also have extensive art collections from which customers can borrow items. The loan period is usually three months.

As I mentioned before, libraries in Germany are not free. The annual cost ranges from €15 to €25 with added fees for other services, but children join the library for free, and there are discounts for seniors, the handicapped and the unemployed, and group rates for families. In Bremen, for example, card holders get two and students get four hours of free internet access each week, but if they want to get six hours of each week, they have to pay an additional €10. If they are 18 years old or older and want to borrow any of the 3,280 pieces of art the library owns, that’s another €10. And with the new self-service RFID, cqrd holders can subscribe to these services themselves when they buy or renew their library card.

Das Leben in Bremen
Nearly 65 years after Second World War ended, you are frequently reminded of it in Germany. In Bremen we were told that 85% of the city was destroyed. Whether rebuilt or spared destruction, many of the old buildings in the center of the city, like the Rathaus (city hall), are magnificent. With lots of red brick, winding streets and ornate architectural styles I’ve seen nowhere else, Bremen and Hamburg are two cities I would like to explore further.

Barbara Lison is a master of (dare I say German?) organization and efficiency. We stayed at a hotel near the Hauptbahnhof (main train station) and not far from the central library. Barbara arrived at the hotel by bicycle to escort us on a brief tour of the city center and to dinner at a restaurant where we ate typical North German food. On the following day, she arranged transportation to branch libraries and the central library in four vehicles. At each location it seemed the entire staff was involved in our visit.

As at the libraries we visited in other cities, a staff member provided simultaneous translation to English if the presentation was in German. For lunch at the central library we had our choice of potato soup or a soup made with meat and tomatoes. Both were very good. They were served with white bread like a French baguette. Dessert was a variety of cookies, or biscuits as the Germans like to say. Barbara arranged transportation to the airport toward the end of our visit for one of our group who had to return early to France. Everything happened how it was supposed to happen and when it was supposed to happen and we arrived back at the station in plenty of time to catch our train to Hamburg.

At dinner we were encouraged to try one of the herring dishes, which I did. My cold herring was served with two warm potato pancakes, cranberry sauce and whipped cream. The pancakes, cranberries and whipped cream seemed to go together well enough. It was the herring that just didn’t seem to belong.

If It’s Tuesday It Must be Bochum: Stadtbucherei Bochum

Libraries in Germany are not free. Membership costs from €15 to €25 a year with discounts or free membership for seniors, handicapped and the unemployed; and group rates for families. This was not always the case. According to librarians in Bochum, libraries began charging for membership in the early 1990s.

I heard the term “person with a migrational background” for the first time in Germany. It refers to people not born in Germany and also to people whose forefathers were not born in Germany. I think it says a lot about Germany’s attitude toward immigration, which Germans, according to one librarian with whom I spoke, are just getting around to acknowledging.

The Stadbucherei Bochum, like the library in Cologne, is trying very hard, and with some success, to attract immigrants and their children. Among other things, some libraries in Germany offer three-month free trial memberships to immigrants and story-times for kids in their native language.

Bochum has what it calls a central library with two branches, a family library and a job-career library with its own homepage. The job-career library has a branch at the local university and a branch in the Stadtmitte (downtown area). The library provides reference service by mail and by SMS.

The collections at the family library, the branches of the central library and the job-career library are organized by theme (thematische Medienprasentation)rather than the ASB (Allgemeine Systematik für Bibliotek), the German equivalent of the Dewey Decimal System. Much of the collection at the central library is organized by theme. In the job-career library, the management books are also classified by author as well to make searching for them easier. The Bochum library calls its classification system BOKLA or Bochumer Klassifikation. The library rotates much of its collection among its three branches annually.

The Job Career Library offers information about Choosing an Occupation, Job Training, Applying for a Job, Starting a Business, Continuing Education Employment Law and the Economy. It is open 53 hours a week. It has six PCs with internet access for general use and two PCs with internet access for completing job applications. The staff has partnered with employment agencies, schools that offer occupational training and organizations in the city that help entrepreneurs establish businesses. It participates in career fairs, job fairs and youth conferences.

The Bochum library gives accounts to schools and other institutions and it has linked its customer profiles with its acquisition system. This allows the library to prepare boxes of materials according to theme for teachers. The family library also prepares boxes of materials by themes for families that request this service. The library provides free delivery of these boxes to schools and institutions but families have to pick up and return the boxes themselves.

The job-career library was part of a major reorganization of the library undertaken between 1998 and 2003 with funds from the Bertelsmann Stiftung (Bertelsmann Foundation). The goals of the project were to increase membership by 50%, increase the number of children who belong to the library by 30 to 40% and to increase lending by 30%.

We visited the branch library in Wattenscheid, which didn’t become part of Bochum until 1975. In addition to the library, the building houses the Wattenscheid Archive and an adult education center. The library is in an immigrant area. It collects in German, Turkish, English, Russian.

The library offers story times in several languages. The stories are read by volunteers. The library gives children reading cards, which it stamps each time a child finishes a book. The library has an arrangement with two local bookstores whereby the children can exchange the card once it has been stamped eight times for a children’s book with a value up to €8,00.

Liselotte is the first name of a well-known author from the area. The library has a serpent named Leselotte (lesen means “to read” in German) that it brings to preschools and kindergartens. Leselotte is a serpent head and a collection of pockets strung together. There is a book in each pocket. One book is Leselotte’s diary. Someone makes an entry in the diary at each place Leselotte visits.

The library has partnered with the adult education center to run programs. It recently hosted a wine tasting.

Das Leben in Bochum
For lunch we had Ruhr currywurst, which we were told is different from Berliner currywurst. It is made with weisswurst and served in a sauce made with cayenne, whereas Beliner currywurst is made with Bruhwurst and served in a sauce made with chili powder.

Like other subways in Germany, the subway in Bochum is a light rail system. A notice in the Bochum subway cars tells riders to let the driver know if they will need a taxi when they get to their stop, and the driver will have someone arrange a taxi for them. Just another one of those things that somehow make life seem more civil in Europe than in the United States.

Bochum is in the heart of the Ruhr, Germany’s famous industrial area. It was stark zerstört (largely destroyed) during the Second World War. Bochum’s economy was based on the steel industry, which today is a shadow of what it once was. Opel is another mainstay, but Opel is owned by General Motors, which is in trouble. Nokia, the Finish company, manufactured in Bochum, but recently moved its operations to Romania. We were told that unemployment in some areas is as high as 50%.

Was Google Nicht Findet or 13 French Librarians Can’t Be Wrong

Was Google nicht findet
or 13 French Librarians Can’t Be Wrong

Bibliotechonomique
On Monday morning we met at the Gard du Nord for an 8:25 train to Cologne. Due to mechanical problems, we had to change trains in Brussels and arrived in Cologne 35 minutes late.



There are 80,000 to one million Turks living in Cologne, where 40% of residents are of “immigrational background.” The library’s services include life-long learning programs and intercultural offers. The library has a five-part program for encouraging immigrants to use the library. They range from training the staff to welcome foreigners to visiting the schools to encourage foreign-born students to come to the library to encouraging these students to bring their family members to the library. Staff are also trained to work with people who are illiterate both in German and their own language.

When we arrived in Cologne, we were served a buffet lunch at the Staatsbibliothek Köln while Hanalore Vogt, the director, gave a presentation about library management. I am impressed by her intelligence, dedication, imagination and creativity.


Later in the day we heard brief presentations on Intergrationskurse (assimilation courses for immigrants) and other programs such as an annual “Professions Day” on which high school students come to the library and talk to professionals about their work, and a cooperative agreement with a museum to provide exposure to other cultures and other religions of the world.

The Cologne library faces a platz (plaza or square) A Volkshochschule, a school offering adult education, and a soon-to-open museum also face the square. The city wants to make this area a kind of cultural center. In keeping with this idea, Hanalore has created a Kulturschaufenster (culture display window) on the ground floor next to the entrance to the library in a space that previously displayed used books for sale. In the window she displays items related to cultural events going on in and around the city.

The library is proud of its Heinrich Böll Archive. Böll was a native of Cologne, and the archive contains items associated with Böll as well as other writers with connections to the city of Cologne. It houses the furnishings from one of the offices in which Böll worked (They were donated to the library by Böll’s son.)as well as letters and other documents. Many of the documents, however, are reproductions or originals housed in other archives.

After saying that satisfied customers tell three people about their experience but dissatisfied customers tell 10 to 12 people about their experience, Hanalore spoke about some of her 50 rules of customer service. She said she would send us her 50 rules after Annie Dourlent, Chef de Service, Coopération - Relations Internales at the BPI, sends her our email addresses.

When a customer asks for books, the Cologne library gives the customer a wish card on which to write as much information as he or she knows about the book and his or her name and contact information. The library will try to obtain the book within three days. If the library thinks the book is not suitable for its collection and the customer has provided contact information, the library will contact the customer and tell the customer that it cannot fulfill his or her wish.

Hanalore pays close attention to customer feedback, and provides a place for customers to provide it. Inside the entrance to the library is a box into which customers can put their Anregungen, Lob, and Kritik (Suggestions, Praise and Complaints).

Management in tough economic times is always more difficult. Hanalore spoke of some prizes her library in Wurzburg awarded to children and young adults when she was operating under a tight budget. These included spending a night at the library, visiting the mayor in her office and taking the children or young adults to places in the city that wouldn’t be accessible to them otherwise. She also partnered with a telephone service provider on an SMS Song Lyrics Contents in which contestants had to write lyrics the length of an SMS text message.

Hanalore’s creativity extends to public relations as well. (She likes to tell politicians that the library lends a book every seven seconds.) In Wurzburg she arranged a promotion with a winery that marketed wine in a bottle with a picture of the library on it. The library received part of the proceeds on the sale of each bottle. She is trying to do something similar with a brewery in Cologne. She ran a promotion with a local bank during the Cologne Marathon with the slogan Laufen Gutes Tun (Running Does Good) through which runners obtained pledges and the library received money for every mile they ran. Among Hanalore’s rules for library public relations are: Surprise—do unexpected things; and Present normal work differently.


Hanalore is putting a café into a space that is now used for paperbooks. She is having the popular magazines moved to the area, and she is having a marketing and design company that has worked for the library design a merchandising display for the paperbacks.

The Cologne library offers e-ausleihe (e-loans) of audiobooks and e-books and it offers free delivery of audiobooks to the blind. The library also is experimenting with e-loan of music but without much success. Vendors want the library to pay per download, but the library would like to negotiate a fixed fee. Either way, the library would have to charge for the service, and older customers prefer checking out CDs to e-loaning music files that will be automatisch zuruckgegeben (automatically given back), and younger customers simply prefer to download music (legally or illegally) from the internet for free. See http://www.onleihe.net.


The library has a very impressive collection of sheet and recorded music. It also has a music room with a grand piano, which it rents for €2.50 an hour. Customers who want to use it to practice or give a recital have to book it at least two weeks in advance.

Another thing the library is experimenting with is connecting users’ profiles with the acquisition tool so that customers automatically get an email telling them that the library has added a new item on a topic of interest to them to its collection.

The Cologne library posts the bestseller list from Der Spiegel, the German news magazine, just as American libraries post the best seller list from The New York Times. The library gives customers the option of “renting” best sellers for €2.00 for two weeks if all copies that circulate for free are checked out. The library acquires the extra copies through an arrangement with its vendor. The number of extra copies the vendor sends depends on the book’s position on the best seller list.

Librarians in the Young Adult Area teach customers how to plan and conduct effective search strategies. The young adults write their search strategy on Suchstrategien (search strategy forms) with the help of the librarians. Was Google nicht findet (What Google doesn’t find) is written on a blackboard behind the information desk in this area.

Library assistants undergo three years of formal training at the Cologne library. During the second year several trainees are chosen to run a branch library where they do everything but provide reference service. During their third year, they serve as mentors to those in the next class who are chosen to run the library.

Das Kölnische Leben
From the library we walked to a restaurant not far from the Dom (cathedral) and the Hauptbanhof (main rain station), where we drank Kölsch, the local beer, and ate typical Rhineland food. Some librarians ordered wurst (sausage) that was two to three feet long. They were served plates of cabbage and fried potatoes. The sausages were served on long wooden planks placed in the middle of the table. Others ate the local version of sauerbraten. The sauce was slightly sweet and made with raisins. A bowl or apple sauce was served on the side.

Self-Perceptions and Coping Skills

La Vie a Paris
An undertaking such as this exchange tests one’s self-perceptions and coping skills. Am I really so patient? Am I really so adaptable? What can I do to keep from becoming frustrated?

I have been here nearly five days and I am beginning to believe that finally I have settled in. Stay tuned. Yesterday was a liberating day. I got my stipend. I got my Bpi badge. And I bought a French cell phone. As the French would say, maintenant je suis branché. Now I am connected.

And this morning I discovered that the adapter I thought I could not use in France works in the old electrical outlets in the apartment, but not the new. Now I can use my computer and charge my cell phone at the same time. Hooray!

My apartment does not have internet access, and I have learned how dependent on the internet I have become. How easy it would be to compare la superficie (area) of Paris and Queens, find the correct spelling of a French word or the conjugation of a French verb if I could only “google it.” But I think I’ve learned how to cope. I have begun to work on documents such as emails and blog entries on my laptop in my apartment in the evening and copy the documents onto a flash drive. If and when I get internet access at the office today, I will send the emails and post the blog entries. If I don’t, I will go to the library this evening and attempt to use wifi. When I was at the library on Monday, the wifi was not working.

Following this plan, of course, requires that I accept the constraint of time. I may have to use the internet for research today, make corrections tonight, and not send certain emails or post certain blog entries until tomorrow. The alternative is to write these documents at the library, which means using a French keyboard. I can’t tell you how frustrating this is for someone who prides himself on his typing speed. I have been telling myself that it makes no sense for me to learn the French keyboard since I will be here only a month. I think I will set learning it as a personal goal instead.

Last night after work I stopped at a patisserie recommended by a colleague. I bought one piece of tarte d’abricot (apricot tart) one piece of tart du pêche et pistache (peach and pistachio tart). Heaven! Will there be more when I get off work tonight?

Bibliothèque Publique d'Information

Bibliothèconomique
The National Centre d’Art et Cultures Georges Pompidou was designed by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers. It was opened in 1977 and renovated between 1998 and 2000. The Bibliotheque Public d’Information (BPI) occupies two and a half floors of the Centre Pompidou. It shares the building with the Musée National d’Art Moderne. The Centre Pompidou also includes an Institute of Musical/Acoustic Research and Coordination (IRCAM), which is housed in a separate building.



The BPI was one of the first libraries in France with open stacks. It is a national research library; its collection does not circulate. It is an agency of the French Ministry of Culture and Communication.


The BPI uses the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) system, which was adapted from the Dewey Decimal System, and like Dewey organizes all fields of knowledge into a hierarchy of 10 classes. At the BPI the subject areas are color coded. Even the book trucks match each subject area’s color.


The BPI is very popular with students, who come because the university libraries are very crowded. The library would like to attract a broader audience, but crowding is a problem here, too. The BPI has a capacity of 2,134 persons. When it reaches capacity, people wait outside along the Rue du Renard and one person is admitted for each person who leaves. According to a recent survey, 70% of visitors wait 20 minutes or less, but the wait can be up to an hour and a half. And once inside, visitors have to wait in line again if they want to use one of the library’s 50 public access computers.

The BPI does not question its popularity, but constantly questions its purpose. It is undertaking a comprehensive review known as BPI 2012. Among other questions, it is asking if it should try to appeal to a different or wider audience and if so, how.

Directly inside the library is an accueil (information desk) staffed by two librarians. Behind the desk an attractive and recently installed display announces to visitors that it is the place where they can get renseignements (information) about employ- ment, health, housing, culture, leisure and other practical advice.

The press area offers 150 daily general inform- ation newspapers and 250 magazines from all over the world in print or on microfilm CD Rom or online. The library also maintains its own press database of selected French press articles on current cultural and social events.

Part of the library’s mission to provide access to everybody is to make access easier for disabled people. The library has five private study areas for blind or visually impaired people equipped with machines to read, write and print in Braille. They also have text scanners that transform written text into spoken words as well as text enlargers and tape recorders and microphones. For the hard of hearing, a onscreen video loop describes the library in sign language. Users must book these areas in advance. They are busy from 10 a.m. until 8 p.m. Users don't come later because they worry that motorists won't see them after dark.

The BPI has an autoformation (self-learning) area with 120 audio-equipped work stations where visitors can learn any of 172 language and dialects, including some rare languages for which the BPI produced materials. The range of other subjects areas covered is wide. Visitors can even study the code de la route (rules of the road) if they are preparing to get their permit de conduire (driver’s license).


The library is very well outfitted electronically. In one area there are 16 televisions with headsets where visitors can listen to American, Chinese, Arabic, British, German, Spanish or Portuguese news channels. There are 40 work areas in the music room where visitors can listen not only to musique enregistrée (recorded music), but also document parlé such audiobooks, speeches and archival material. The music room also equipped with two headset-equipped pianos for public use.

In addition to télévision du monde, presse and autoformation, the first floor includes these UDC subject areas: sciences documentaries; philosophie, psychologie; religions, sciences socials; sciences and médicine. In addition to musique and documents parlé, the second floor include the subject areas: arts, cinéma, sports, loisir; langues, literatures and géographie, histoire.

La Vie à Paris
In many ways all of Paris is a work of art. On Saturday evening I ventured into the subway for the first time. There are many cool things about it – like the escalator with Plexiglas sides so you can see the moving parts. Many of the stations are decorated so as to “make an echo (faire un echo)” as the French would say, of what is going on above. The Arts et Métiers (Arts and Crafts) station, for example, is copper clad. At Chatelet I passed a man playing Middle Eastern music on a stringed instrument. A few steps further I happened upon an eight-piece ensemble, including bass, playing what sounded to me like Balkan music.

Just west of the Centre Pompidou is the Place Igor Stravinsky with a fanciful fountain created by French artists Jean Tinguely and Nike de St-Phalle.

I had lunch on Monday with two library colleagues. They had blue cheese quiche. I had penne au saumon. It was delicious. Add that to my culinary adventures, which, so far, include a sandwich du jambon de paye et emmenthal, a crepe complete and a gallette libanaise, which is like the bread you get in Indian restaurants rolled like a crepe. Mine was filled with sausage and a cheese much like feta. To make the crepe complete, the cook broke an egg onto a crepe after he flipped it and as it continued to cook. When the egg was set, he put grated cheese and a slice of ham on top and folded the crepe into quarters.

There was a suicide at the Centre Pompidou yesterday. Not the first, I’m told. A man jumped from the fifth floor to his death. It was the day after Nuit Blanche. It was rainy and it was Monday.