Gallica / Gallica 2: BnF’s Digital Library

Gallica is one of the largest digital libraries available online for free.

 

It serves as an encyclopaedic and cultural heritage library and offers the public a wide range of thematic bodies of knowledge centered on History, Literature, Sciences, Philosophy, Law, Economics and Political Science.

Gallica focuses primarily on works about France, in the French language, and published in France. However, it also offers foreign-language classics either in original or translated version.

 

 

Enhancements to the Gallica digital library are in line with the Gallica digital library charter and the implementation of new partnerships.

The BnF is carrying on its printed cultural heritage digitisation programmes, among which the Newspaper programme from the 19th century until 1944. This ambitious programme covers 27 periodical titles and will end with 3,2 million pages of newspapers freely accessible via Gallica.

 

 

Since 2007, BnF has been improving its digitisation programmes, with 100,000 new items being digitised each year, in text and image mode.

In 2007, BnF and SAFIG, leading a group of other companies, signed a three-year agreement for a mass digitisation programme in both image and text mode.

Until 2005, 5,000 to 6,000 documents were added to the digital library per year. The aim is now to digitise 20 times more items, in high accuracy.

 

In the first phase of the project, only public domain documents were planned to be available. However, within the context of an experiment led by French publishers Association and the BnF, the possibility to place more recent documents online is being studied.

 

Gallica 2 and Gallica are both online at two different urls which allows the Internet users to take immediate advantage of these improved services and the BnF to collect remarks and suggestions to make them even better.   Gallica 2 already provides access to books, periodicals, images and maps and plans also available via Gallica. Little by little, new types of items digitised by BnF will be included in the new version: sound recordings, manuscripts, scores.

Give us your opinion Surveys on digital librairies were carried out to collect the users’ feedbacks. These feedbacks are taken into account during the implementation of Gallica 2. Please give us your advice and comments about Gallica 2 website at: gallica2@bnf.fr

Since March 2008, search has been possible for several thousands of recent books available in digital format via e-retailers’ websites (with free or controlled access). Other documents will be progressively available.

 

Like Gallica, Gallica 2 will soon provide access to documents from digital libraries of French associated organisations.

 

Full-text search is now available for certain books which gives the possibility to search for one or several words inside the document.

Some documents are even available both in image and text modes. The search result page offers the possibility to download the file containing the text in its raw form; actually, there is no layout and the text is provided exactly as it was restored by an optical character recognition software.

 

Gallica 2 also makes it possible to create one’s own personal library, to create some files to contain one’s favorite items, to tag (or bookmark) pages or to save one’s search.

 

The Gallica 2 website was conceived in accordance with the W3C standard on accessibility. Some specific services for visually impaired users (key-access, access to the text in its raw form) are being progressively available.

 

At the end of 2008, when all services and types of items from Gallica are available via Gallica 2, the website will be considered successfully completed. The former Gallica website will thus be closed and the new one will find its role and name.

 

Key dates September 2006 – A maquette offering a set of functionalities for a European digital library was launched online. This maquette, called “Europeana” and including documents from the national libraries of Hungary and Portugal, was the BnF contribution to the European initiative. March 2007 – The prototype “Europeana” was put online and used as a laboratory to test new services such as full-text search on each word of the book, the possibility to create one’s personal library and to tag pages (virtual bookmarks). These major improvements are integrated in Gallica 2. October 2007 – BnF opens a test version of Gallica 2 website. End of 2007 / Beginning of 2008 – New enhancements to Gallica, among which the loading of new images, are progressively achieved; most Gallica material formerly available only in image mode are re-processed to be accessible in full-text search. January 2008 – Access to the “Europeana” prototype implemented by BnF is closed. The “Europeana” name becomes the offical name of the European Digital library which website is being set up by the EDLnet project. March 2008 – Gallica 2, BnF’s digital library enables access both to public domain digitised documents (about 60,000 books and 80,000 images) and several thousands of copyrighted books recently published via some e-retailers’ websites, on the occasion of the 2008 Paris Book Fair and within the context of a one-year experiment starting March 2008. This new service is set up thanks to a collaboration between the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Syndicat national de l’Édition (French Publishers Association), the Direction du Livre et de la Lecture (Book and Reading Directorate), the Centre national du Livre (CNL/National Center for the Book) and the associated e-retailers and publishers. for more info about Gallica 2 experiment   July 2008 – New enhancements are being achieved among which the loading of periodicals, newspapers, and maps and plans.The BnF digitisation programme, that plans to digitise 100,000 documents a year during three years, starts to be added to the new website. In parallel, it is planned to increase the number of books accessible via e-retailers’ websites thanks to partnerships with publishers. End of 2008 – Sound archives, manuscripts and scores will be integrated in Gallica 2. Finally, the website will provide access to digital libraries of French associated organisations already available via Gallica: the items digitised in partnership with or by the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (CNAM/ National Institute of Applied Sciences), the Bibliothèque interuniversitaire de médecine (BIUM/ University Library of Medicine – Paris), the Centre d’études supérieures de la Renaissance (CESR/ Centre of high level studies for Renaissance) and the Université Louis Pasteur de Strasbourg (ULP) will thus be searchable via the Gallica 2 search engine. Gallica 2 website will replace the former Gallica website.