Interview Dusoulier (2000) Rayward/INIST

Interview with Nathalie Dusoulier by W. Boyd Rayward in 2000

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Interview with Nathalie Dusoulier by W. Boyd Rayward in 2000

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Institut de l’Information Scientifique et Technique (INIST)

11

Rayward

I think that’s interesting, because my sense is that INIST, Institut de l’Information Scientifique et Technique, has a rather different focus.

Dusoulier

Now. But that was not the purpose of its creation. The purpose was to become a European center, in fact. We can have a look at it.

The goal was: “La confirmation de transfer à Nancy. Où la préparation de l’organigramme du futur institut. Afin que celui-ci paisse répondre aux impératifs d’innovation, de productivité, de commercialisation. Tout en évoluant avec les techniques nouvelles.”

Commercialization

Rayward

So this is, in a sense, the new bit, the commercialization?

Dusoulier

The commercialization goal is new. This is why we thought — la création d’une filiale de commercialisation. So that we could better sell what we were doing. You know, the goal was la création d’un INIST en ordre de constituer un pôle national, de production et de diffusion de l’information scientifique et technique spécialisé à l’intention de la recherche dans les entreprises.

Rayward

That’s new, too, isn’t it—the entreprises? The businesses.

Dusoulier

It is new. You know, these are physical science, science for engineers. Informatique documentaire indispensable au fonctionnement de tous les centres de documentation modernes.

Collaboration with international organizations

Rayward

So, those are the organizations within France that are cooperating with INIST?

Dusoulier

Yes. This is cooperation with Bibliothèque de France. This is the beginning of research in bibliometry. The first steps to the digitalization. We have organized a close cooperation with a number of centers to try to solve the problems related to the digitalization of documents.

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Rayward

These are the international centers?

Dusoulier

International centers and also Centre Scientifique et technique du Bâtiment in France, Fachinformationszentrum in Karlsruhe [Germany], VINITI [All-Russian Institute for Scientific and Technical Information], Wissenchaft für Mathematik, Informationzentrum Sozialwissenschaften in Bonn, Swedoc in Sweden, EGO, Consiplio Nazionale delle Ricerche in Italy, Konin Klijke Bibliotheck in the Netherlands, and Japinfo in Japan. We had a very close relationship with all of them.

Rayward

When you say you have a close relationship with these organizations, what does that actually involve?

Dusoulier

With the Russians, we had been working together, exchanging information, journals, and abstracts. With the Japanese, they had their own officers in our offices, and we had a center in Japan in JICST [Japan Information Center of Science and Technology]. It was a kind of follow-up of DGRST. But it was in the ministry of—well, the name of this ministry has changed very often—it was Ministère de la Recherche and then Ministère de l’Éducation et la Recherche. Then they were separated. But Bureau National de l'Information Scientifique et Technique [BNIST] was created when Jacques Michel, who was the cultural attaché or scientific attaché—I’m really not sure—in Washington came back for reasons unknown. Their goal was like DGRST, to be a kind of hat for all the information activities in France.

I don’t remember many meetings in BNIST. I remember once we were working with BNIST on how to participate into European databases altogether. I remember, there was a database in metallurgy called SDIM [System für Dokumentation und Information der Metallurgie], and we were working with BNIST to see how France could participate in this European database. Then Jacques Michel went to The Hague. He is one of the directors of information in the European Patent Office. He might have retired by now. But he was a quite important person. When BNIST dissolved, it was replaced by MIDIST [Mission Interministérielle de l’Information Scientifique et Technique]. But their goal was always the same. INIST and CDST, et cetera, were always officially separate—really because we were always so big. BNIST and MIDIST only had four or five people.

Rayward

Where did you, as an organization, get your money?

Dusoulier

CNRS from the Ministry of Research. We were 100 percent from the CNRS budget.

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Rayward

So, these organizations that we’re talking about really, as you say, just had a broad coordinating function.

Dusoulier

Yes. They only had a coordinating function. An important coordinating function.

Rayward

They only had a little impact, I gather, on what you folks were doing?

Dusoulier

I’d say that, but not officially. [laughter] But we were always so big that we could do whatever we wanted, anyway. Also because CNRS said, “Look, we are CNRS, and we do what we want. And you?”

Rayward

It seems there was a major reevaluation of what was going on in CDST in 1974 or thereabouts. The comment was, “Passage d’une publication traditionnelle organisée en fonction des disciplines universitaires à des publications spécialisées adaptées à des clientèles particulières.”

Dusoulier

Yes. But this was always a part of putting together, splitting, and specializing. In 1974, we produced specialized publications more targeted to professions.

Caroline Wiegandt-Sakoun

Rayward

An article by Caroline Wiegandt-Sakoun made the comment that this was the evolution of the concept of marketing (2).

Dusoulier

She was my librarian in INIST. She was the lady who moved the collections.

Rayward

I’m interested in this notion of moving to a much more commercial, market-oriented service.

Dusoulier

In the beginning, Bulletin Signalétique was not really sold to industry. More and more, the industries in France realized the role of information. Because, in the beginning, they didn’t consider information to be very important for them.

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Then, more and more, big companies like Rhone-Poulenc [AG Company] starte creating documentation centers and hiring documentalists. That was very funny because most of our people were moving to these places. In the beginning, we thought it was a disaster. But after a while, we were very happy because that was our best advertisement.

Of course, these people wanted to have more specialized information. For example, we had a contract with a big cardiological drug company. We were doing a special bulletin for them on specialized questions about cardiology related to their drugs. We were selling them three or four hundred copies, and they distributed it free of charge to the doctors in the hospitals. That covered this type of operation. But the CDST always tried. Also, it was during the period after 1971 when we resolved to try to target and to help the European industry more. This is a part of Euronet. It, the Conseil de Ministre de la Communauté Européenne, was possible because the PASCAL database was, at that time, stable. It was then very easy to extract from the databases any of the different specialized fields we had. But they were a kind of profile.

We had profiles printed and profiles on paper.

Rayward

When the online services began, did they affect some of this work? It would have then been possible for these companies to search PASCAL online.

Dusoulier

No. Well, at the beginning, we only did the searches ourselves. We had a large department producing profiles and researchers for the users. We didn’t want to provide online services ourselves. That was clear. Then we gave our databases to host computers to distribute online.

But it did affect us when we didn’t want to do Bulletin Signalétique any more. We tried to replace Bulletin Signalétique because the cost of printing and the cost of paper were rising. That was a period when we tried to tell people, “Look, we are going to provide you with profiles, group profiles.” We had some group profiles, and we had some personalized profiles, and we were selling that to our users.

Rayward

When did you stop publishing Bulletin Signalétique as a periodical?

Dusoulier

The end of 1994, after I left CDST (3).

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