Tag Archives: National libraries

BnF’s new Digital Roadmap: the ultimate travel companion in the Digital Countries of the National Library of France… and beyond

What you see in the image below is the Digital Roadmap of the National Library of France (BnF):  [https://www.bnf.fr/sites/default/files/2021-04/SN%202020_poster_BAT_ANG%2003.pdf]. Whether you want to follow the footsteps of Artificial Intelligence, explore the digitization region or discover the way the Library shares its infrastructures and skills, you’ll find on this map a comfortable, welcoming place to spend your time. It displays a panoramic and comprehensive view of the Library’s digital life in order to help people find their way and work together in this complex ecosystem on a day-to-day basis. Its regions are surrounded by the Knowledge Ocean; its lands extend beyond the map’s borders, open to numerous partnerships, tools, projects and ideas.

This edition of the Library’s Digital roadmap follows two very different ones (in the late 2000s and the mid-2010s [https://www.bnf.fr/en/schema-numerique-bnf-2016]). It is the result of a collective approach involving about 150 people, that still supports the digital transformation of the Library today. The medium chosen is quite unusual, drawing inspiration from both the Library’s collections of maps and plans, for example from the “Carte de Tendre” (map of Tender) tradition of the courteous French literature tradition (http://expositions.bnf.fr/cartes/grand/sq11-06.htm), and also from card games. Metaphor is used to bring humanity and poetry to digital issues, to enable a common understanding of a complex subject and to promote the Library’s vision for the future:

  • Ever more accessible
  • Responsible and ethical approaches
  • Towards renewed catalogues and cataloguing
  • The foundations of digital heritage of the 21st century
  • A library devoted to long-term digital preservation worldwide

This edition also shows the increasing importance, currently, of issues related to the working environment at the Library, for both staff and users – something we were already thinking about before the 2020 lockdown.

Several must-see spots are particularly recommended to Academic and Research libraries lovers: the BnF Data Lab, CartoMundi, Shared heritage, the URL shortener c.bnf.fr, IIIF, data.bnf.fr, Digital hospitality, the Digital legal deposit development, Studying, examining, anticipating uses…

Céline Leclaire

Strategic Media Production Officer

Services and Networks Directorate

National Library of France

celine.leclaire@bnf.fr

Generic email address for the project:schema.numerique@bnf.fr

Further readings: