By Mary Boldrini
European Institute for Business Administration

How this SLA-Toronto member ended up working in France

I remember the day I first saw the famous horse-shoe shaped staircase of the Fontainebleau Castle on a family vacation in 1991. (Fontainebleau is approximately 65 km southeast of Paris and is well known for its castle and surrounding forest.) Little did I realize that, as a new library school graduate just one year later, I would end up working down the road from the castle at INSEAD (the French acronym for the European Institute for Business Administration).

Having prepared for a career in science librarianship (B. Math at Waterloo, MLIS at Western and an internship at CISTI, Ottawa), I had never even heard of INSEAD, an international business school offering American-style MBA and PhD degrees as well as Executive Education Programmes. My dream of living in France (or anywhere else in Europe for that matter) came true, one day, when I answered an advertisement for a bilingual librarian in an international setting one hour from Paris! How could this francophile from Hamilton resist!

INSEAD's Euro-Asia Centre, offering executive programmes specifically dealing with business in the Asia/Pacific region has, its own library. This article only describes INSEAD's main library.

My current duties at the main library include: 1) subject cataloguing of new books (though we use Library of Congress classification numbers, we index using an in-house thesaurus), 2) maintaining the online thesaurus, 3) training new users (orientation tours and CDROM demonstrations), 4) providing user assistance at the circulation and reference desks (most of the staff have dual duties in technical and user services), 5) writing library guides.

INSEAD's Library Services

INSEAD's main library is a medium-sized academic library consisting of several collections:

• 30,000 books
• 1,000 periodicals (of which nearly half are on CD ROM)
• 10,000 research papers from 100 institutes
• 500 video cassettes
• 300 INSEAD case studies
• 10,000 annual reports from 3000 companies
• 15 CDROMs of which five are abstract databases, five full text databases and five company financial databases.

The teaching language at INSEAD is English while the language of administration is French. Collections are therefore mainly in English or French, with very little in other European languages. What makes this library's collections unique in France is not its European content, but rather its high proportion of British and American publications. (For specifically European Union information, specialized libraries exist in each member country.)

The library's online catalogue uses Multilis software. Besides containing individual catalogues for each of the above collections. Two inhouse databases are also accessible from OPAC terminals: a table of contents database (for issues received at the library) and a database of faculty research.

The library has access to Knight-Ridder, MAID, Reuter Business Briefing and Datastream online systems, although searches are performed only by the database manager and his assistant, not by the staff at the information desk.

For interlibrary loan/photocopy requests, the library makes use of its membership in EBSLG, the European Business School Librarians' Group, a network of libraries that has created a collective catalogue of periodicals. In addition, the library turns to French university and research libraries, using the French union catalogue for serials CCN (Catalogue Collectif National) or the collective book catalogue PANCATALOGUE, both of which are available online. The library also makes use of the British Library Document Supply Centre.

Information Professionals

Information professionals go by several names in France, including:

• Bibliothécaire for librarian
• Documentaliste for information specialist, special librarian, or records manager,
• Archiviste for archival librarian or records manager, and
• Conservateur for "curators" i.e. heads of large public or government libraries (also for museums!).

The term for librarian is considered pejorative (!) and applies to librarians who work in traditional settings processing mainly books. It is interesting to note that ADBS, the French equivalent of SLA, recently changed its name from Association des documentalistes et des bibliothécaires spécialisés, i.e. the Association of documentalists and specialized librarians - to Association des professionnels de l'information et de la documentation, i.e. the Association of information and documentation professionals.

There are several academic qualifications that allow a person to work as a librarian:

• 2-year technician's diploma
• 3 or 4-year university degree
• 1-year post-graduate degree at specialized institutes.

To work in the public service (i.e. public, school, government and national libraries), candidates must also pass an entrance exam, which varies depending on the type of position.

Library schools are not accredited by the library associations. Recently, however, the ADBS implemented a certification program whereby information professionals can be designated as working at the expert, engineer, technician or assistant level. The certification is based not so much on academic qualifications but on skills and job activities.

The ADBS publishes a journal called Documentaliste (available on subscription) and a newsletter for its members called ADBS-Informations. The association is quite active in offering continuing education courses, publishing library and information-related publications, and acting as an advocate for the profession.

It sponsors a listserv called ADBS-INFO. For more information contact:

ADBS
25, rue Claude Tilier
75012 Paris
Tel. (33.1) 43 72 25 25
Fax (33.1) 43 72 30 41

During my first year at INSEAD, I convinced the head of the library to become a member of SLA's Business and Finance Division, European Chapter. Unfortunatedly, the library staff found that membership in SLA offered little to European librarians. This is probably true (I can't help but be biased!). The French tend to follow librarianship in the UK more than in the USA. I've been told of recent efforts to strengthen SLA's European links, via the British membership.

In my opinion, this is a step in the right direction!

Copyright © 1996 SLA. All rights reserved.

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