Interview Dusoulier (2000) Rayward/CNRS

Interview de Nathalie Dusoulier par W. Boyd Rayward en 2000

Entrée au Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)

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Science History Institute Sommaire de la version numérique de l'interview de Nathalie Dusoulier par Byord Rayward Intoduction Nathalie Dusoulier, repères biographiques Entrée au Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) Institut de l’Information Scientifique et Technique (INIST) Conversation sur diverses organisations Carrière à l'INIST Index

Chemical Heritage Foundation (Science History Institute) Oral program history

Ouvrage en cours de structuration de traduction et de mise en forme

Formation et début de carrière

01

Rayward

S'il vous plait, parlez moi de votre famille et de votre éducation.

Dusoulier

Je suis née à Nice, en France de parents russes. I attended school in Nice.

Parcours éducatif

J'ai étudié la pharmacologie à Marseille et obtenu ma thèse de pharmacologie à Paris. Toujours à Paris, j'ai aussi étudié des disciplines complémentaires comme la biologie, la sérologie et la virologie à l'Institut Pasteur.

I decided to study business administration because of my husband. He has a Ph.D. in political science and a diploma in engineering. I received a diploma in business administration when it began in France—during the first year, but I was not very good because law did not interest me much. I was selected because there were not many scientists studying that. There was only one pharmacologist and one veterinarian.

Rayward

Were you the only woman in the program?

Dusoulier

No, there were other women.

Rayward

When was this?

Dusoulier

Vers 1960.

I studied supplementary diplômes (diplomas) in the pharmaceutical industry in order to work in industry; I didn’t want to work in a pharmacy.

Accident de voiture

At the end of 1960, I was in a car accident, and stayed in bed for about a year. After that, the doctor said that I could not work standing up for at least three or four years, so I had to find a new job. I had been working in pharmacy doing biological analysis. I didn’t even know what other jobs I was qualified for that wouldn’t require standing.

Just before my accident, I had found a job at the Laboratoire de la Grange, a pharmaceutical laboratory for the control of drugs.

02

Today, I don’t think the subject is that interesting, but, at the time, I was happy there. Then came the accident, which was just terrible.

My husband and I were in the car with our three children.

Rayward

Were they hurt as well?

Dusoulier

Not really. My husband was hurt; he was pinned in. I was thrown out of the car.

I decided to put an advertisement in Le Monde stating, “Doctor of pharmacy with these diplômes, knowing French, English, German, Russian, and Spanish, would like to find a job that doesn’t require standing.”

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Entrée au Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)

Dusoulier

At first, I did not receive a thing. Then, after two weeks, I received a letter from CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) stating that they wanted me to analyze, abstract, and index Russian and German journals in pharmacology, biochemistry, and biophysics. I thought, “That’s stupid.” [laughter] “I could never do that kind of job.” But I decided to go and see what it was like anyway.

When I arrived at CNRS headquarters, I was horrified! The main office was a large room with people sitting around at desks, as if they were in a classroom. These were people with Ph.D.s and master’s degrees in various disciplines. They told me, “Oh, we want you, absolutely.” They asked me to do some corrections to a manuscript—correct the mistakes. I had never done that before, but I must have done well because they were very happy with that stupid work. [laughter] Then they said, “We want you to start next week.” I responded that I couldn’t because my husband was traveling for his work and I wanted to talk it over with him first. But they said, “If you don’t like it, just leave. No obligation. Your contract will be processed, but that takes two or three months—don’t worry.” So, I gave in and started working there. As it turns out, it was, in fact, quite interesting. The work was slightly difficult. I knew Russian, but they gave me Bulgarian, Polish, and many Czech-related languages. I told them, “I know Russian, not Ukrainian or any of these other ones.” They answered, “Yes, but if you cannot do it, who can?” So I tried and I ended up doing that for a little more than a year.

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Early indexing methods

Rayward

Were you preparing abstracts?

03

Dusoulier

I was preparing abstracts and creating indexes or the index matière (subject index). I told myself, “All right, I’ll do this for a while, recover, and then try to do something else.” A cette époque, Jean Wyart était le directeur du CDST (Centre de Documentation Scientifique et Technique). Son adjoint était un chercheur espagnol de haut niveau.

CDST had several departments. The official director of Bulletin Signalétique, the largest department, was a Spanish man named Dr. Garrids.

Dr. Pierre Brygoo

Garrids decided to leave for Spain to continue his research and a researcher from Institut Pasteur called Dr. [Pierre] Brygoo replaced Garrids. Brygoo’s job was to make CDST more fashionable. By more fashionable, I mean to incorporate automation—not the creation of online files or anything like that, but the automation of daily operations. Bulletin Signalétique, as you know, was a very large operation. We were doing half a million author indexes. Back then twenty or thirty people sat at very long tables— A, B, C—working in alphabetical order like that.

Rayward

On cards?

Dusoulier

Yes. Even on stamps. We had a piece of paper to do the abstracts. On the top were the authors on small stamps ; on the side, the subjects; and on the middle, the abstracts. Then people cut all these small pieces and classified them—first, by the authors, and then by the indexes. Then they put all the indexes on tables. On other tables, they put the authors. Clerical people classified the authors, and scientists classified the subject indexes. They tried to organize it. You know, it was not a machine. The computer would reject the work if one thing were wrong. The idea was to try to automate these operations. Dr. Brygoo only knew a little about automation. This was during 1962 and 1963. At that time, Compagnie de Saint-Gobain, a very large chemical company, had started the automation of their documentation. That was the first time that had ever happened in France. One of the people in charge of that was Monsieur Pigagniol, a friend of Brygoo. Brygoo, after a few months, decided that I was going to help him with the automation operation. So I was put in charge of one department of Bulletin Signalétique. As we didn’t have a lot of space, I sat with Brygoo in a very large office. In France, that arrangement was unusual because people liked their privacy; they liked to have their own offices. However, Brygoo wanted to work in the same space so that we would able to exchange information. That was how we started talking about automation. Then, Dr. Brygoo was offered a job in [the United States of] America by a large American laboratory—Eli Lilly [and Company]—so he decided to go to America. [laughter] He left us with all of our problems and without a chief of biomedical sciences. There were three departments at that time; one dealt with everything associated with biology: agriculture, medicine, biology, pharmacology, and biophysics. Another dealt with mathematics, physics, chemistry, et cetera. The chief was a lady named Madame Duval. The other department dealt with les sciences humaines (social sciences). There were three separate Bulletins Signalétiques. Brygoo was in charge of the biology department. After he decided to leave, the biology department stayed without a chief for maybe three or four months.

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Jean Wyart

04

Dusoulier

En cette période, nous étions sous la direction de Jean Wyart.

At the end of that year, Jean Wyart called me in to his office and said, “I hope you are not planning to go on holiday for Christmas.” And I told him that I was, but he insisted, “No, you have to stay—you are going to take over biology.” To which I responded, “That’s impossible. I was the last to arrive here.” There were two ladies—one in charge of medicine and the other in charge of agriculture—who had been there much longer than I was. I told Wyart, “I’m going to have a lot of problems with them.” But he declared, “No, you take over biology and announce it to them yourself.” [laughter] That was very convenient for him. I agreed to take over biology and I told the ladies, “Look, I didn’t ask for anything because I’m not planning on staying anyway. But this is life.” They were all right with it and said, “Look, we know you. We don’t know who else could have been named for the position.” And so we began working and did quite a good job of starting the automation of authors and indexes.

A year later, Madame Duval retired. The director of human sciences was a geography researcher. He didn’t retire, but he didn’t want to do his job anymore and decided to leave. One day, Jean Wyart called me, and said, “I would like to tell you that you are also going to take over mathematical, physical, and the human sciences departments.” I replied, “Look, I don’t know anything about mathematics; I’m not very good at that.” He insisted, “Oh, no, you can do it. You have very good people from the field with you. Your two deputies are very good at physics as well as chemistry. You take the human sciences.” And I told him, “Human sciences? I cannot; we look at things completely different. I am very precise; I like my work to be very precise.” The researchers in human sciences did not come to work. Their work for Bulletin Signalétique was two years’ late. The researchers thought it didn’t matter because “it’s human sciences, we have the life.”

I came home and told my husband, “You know, some of these people are very poor professionals, but some need the job because they have families, et cetera. What am I going to do?” Finally, I decided, “All right, I will do it ad interim until you find someone who can really take over completely.” Wyart agreed.

I was lucky, half of the people working during my interim decided to leave because I forced them to come to work. Some had several jobs. Back then, having several jobs was not permitted. Ils engagèrent donc Madame Louise Cadoux, maître de requêtes de Conseil d’État. She was excellent. She is now working in Conseil d’État. She said to me, “I am sorry that you didn’t do the interim longer because maybe some more of the bad people would have left.” [laughter] Madame Cadoux recruited new people who worked well with her.

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Les débuts de l'automatisation et de l'informatisation

We began to study the automation of the Bulletin Signalétique. A ce moment Jean Wyard partit en retraite et fut remplacé par Jacques D’Olier. Bien sur, le travail devint très difficile car Jacques D’Olier venait de la Délégation Générale de l’Information Scientifique et Technique (DGRST), qui dépendait du cabinet du Premier Ministre.

Wyart had never informed the chiefs of the different departments of D’Olier’s nomination. The chiefs wanted Jacques Cordonnier, who was doing all kinds of research on cards. But, one day Jean Wyart called a meeting and said, “I’d like you to meet your new boss.”

05

People drew their breath.

There was a terrible silence. Jacques D’Olier was very shy. The silence stretched on for ten minutes. Nobody knew what to say. Jean Wyart broke the silence with, “I hope you will help D’Olier.” I thought, “Well, I am the newest employee, but I have to say something.” So I said, “All right, we will help you as much as we can” followed by some of the stupid things that people always say in that type of situation. He was always very grateful to me for having broken that silence. [laughter] D’Olier a recruté un jeune homme nommé Pierre Buffet, dont vous avez probablement entendu parler. He is the international relations director of Questel [Company], a large host computer company distributing Chemical Abstracts and databases in France. Pierre Buffet had just come from the army and had studied in the north of France. He was supposed to help us with the computing. At that time, we said, “This is what we would like the computer to do.” The computer people told us, “Oh, that’s impossible. That’s impossible.” But we finally got what we requested.

We had the possibility to take computing courses at INRIA—Institut National de Recherché en Informatique et en Automatique, in Versailles. Andre Berthelot, who was the chief of physics, and I decided to go and follow the courses to try to understand why everything was so difficult.

Rayward

You were talking before about those little author indexes on pieces of paper the sizes of stamps, and so on. You were beginning to look at automation at that point. Were they actually experimenting with punch cards?

Dusoulier

I never worked with punch cards. But there was a department in CDST under the responsibility of Cordonnier, whom I never worked with, who was experimenting with punch cards. He was using them in the translation department to try and index the translations that were already done. It’s very expensive to do translations. When a researcher asked for a translation, it was good to know if one already existed.

We started working with a computer. I think it was an IBM 360. It was a very modest attempt, and in the beginning, it was more difficult to do it that way than to do it by hand. In America, they had experience with them, but we didn’t in France.

This is how we started the automation and why I studied the computing. I didn’t study a very high level of mathematics; my training was practical, on software and hardware. I was doing more of the systems analysis than programming, myself. At that time, it was very difficult to do programming. It was much more difficult than now. [laughter]

Then we continued the automation. We produced the Bulletin Signalétique with the computer. Then we decided that it was not enough and started thinking about the PASCAL database. Pierre Buffet and I are the parents of the PASCAL database. But at that time, the database was just a by-product of the Bulletin Signalétique. We had it all on tapes. We tried to do a database like that, which is the actually the opposite of how it should be done. We understand that now.

06

We had to make so many corrections to the database.

First, we had to take all the marks and codes out of the database. It took a lot of time, because we needed a lot of codes. Nobody wanted to abandon the Bulletin Signalétique style with italics, bold, different type of characters, and all the mathematical signs, et cetera. Then, we couldn’t print anything on paper because the tape was so dirty with all these codes and marks. It was, in fact, a printed Bulletin Signalétique on tape. When we saw how difficult it was to use these tapes, we started thinking of reversing this operation. But it was very difficult to tell that to the editing staff, because they didn’t want to abandon anything. They all thought that different subjects could not be treated with the same system. They thought physics and medicine needed a different system and mathematics and human sciences needed a special computing system. We had heard that for years. Even so, we decided we were going to use only one system. If there were a need of some adaptation for mathematics, for example, we’d see to that later. That was how we started the automation.

Rayward

What did you do by way of discovering applications of different standards—bibliographical standards, the MARC [machine readable cataloging] formats, and things of that kind?

Dusoulier

I was involved in ISO TC 46 (International Standards Organization’s Technical Committee), for many, many years. I even chaired one of the annual meetings, et cetera.

[END OF TAPE, SIDE 1]

Dusoulier

We were not using the MARC format because it was considered to be too complicated for scientific information systems. In fact, our colleagues, friends from the information side of things, with whom we were already working—Chemical Abstracts, Physikalische Berichte, INSPEC [Information Service in Physics, Electrotechnology and Control], and all the organizations, the Russians, et cetera — were all using our own formats.

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ICSU AB, Bureau des résumés analytiques du Conseil international des unions scientifiques

Rayward

What form did your collaborations with those organizations take?

Dusoulier

In the form of the ICSU AB [International Council of Scientific Unions Abstracting Board]. We had been doing a common list of periodicals, processed, in a sense, by technical information systems. We had a meeting of ICSU AB every year, and we discussed our problems about the journal exchange of publications, et cetera. It was decided to start working for a kind of communication format that could be used by all the systems. It was not very successful because it was difficult. But it helped us to understand where the problems were. Still the decision was not to use MARC.

07

The world was really divided in two parts: librarians that were using MARC, including our own librarians; and the scientific information centers that were using, more or less, their own much simpler formats.

It was only later—many years after that—that it was decided to work on the reconciliation of MARC and the systems we used. We used the UNISIST [United Nations International Scientific Information System] format when it started. It seems a little bit strange now, but at that time so many things were going on that we were running in all directions.

All these information centers were trying to find a better and cheaper way to produce their publications. In fact, that was the goal of all of us. We were visiting each other to see how we were working. There were no secrets. All the people were showing what they were doing. I remember being in Columbus, where they were doing their coding, and having them try to show it to us. But it was just the beginning.

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Utilisation de Pascal

Rayward

So, when you began the PASCAL database, you also included the sciences humaines?

Dusoulier

Yes, later. We started with the biology, and then we did the sciences humaines. Bulletin Signalétique was only published every three months. It took more time to automate the sciences humaines, but Louise Cadoux has done it. This is how the PASCAL database was developed.

Rayward

Could you speak about some of the related organizations? You mentioned one, the Délégation Générale de l’Information Scientifique et Technique. Apparently, that was set up in 1959.

Dusoulier

Maybe. I don’t know.

Rayward

Then there was a Comité d’Étude de la Documentation and an Association Nationale pour l’Étude de la Documentation Automatisée [L’ANEDA]. Their names came out of this article (1). I wondered what these were, how important they were, and what bearing they had on CNRS and CDST. Well, apparently, in 1963, there was a plan of some sort—the “VI^e Plan.” They keep referring to that in this article.

Dusoulier

Association Nationale pour l’Étude de la Documentation Automatisée. Le sixième plan (the sixth plan) is a governmental plan. This was not especially for documentation or for information. It was the plan for our government. It had no impact.

08

The only result of that was the nomination of Jacques Brygoo. And to try to apply this to L’ANEDA. But, in fact, he put his own ideas in very fast.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

Dusoulier

Then they decided to set up the Centre de Documentation des Sciences Humaines. It was a separate center from CDST. First, the Bulletin Signalétique was divided into three parts. Then everything was reunited.

Rayward

That was starting to happen when you were interim director?

Dusoulier

Yes, let’s say that. Then they created two centers. This was when the Centre de Documentation Scientifique et Technique moved to a new place. The Centre de Documentation des Sciences Humaines was moved to the new Maison des Sciences de l’Homme when it was built. Then there were two centers.

Rayward

Each center was still producing the Bulletin Signalétique related to its area?

Dusoulier

Yes, each center was doing exactly the same.

Rayward

Was there a common processing center for the two?

Dusoulier

Yes, at one time. Then, they both started using the computer of Maison des Sciences de l’Homme. The same computer people were doing both. There were a lot of different periods, with a lot of changes.

Rayward

Yes, during one period—I think it was 1964—the Bulletin Signalétique seemed to be split into different sections.

Dusoulier

Yes. This was at the request of researchers. They didn’t want to have a big Bulletin Signalétique to read. With automation, it was easier to do that. But, in fact, it has created a lot of problems with those automations because of duplication. Physics cannot take over biophysics. But in biology, you need biophysics. So a number of abstracts were put in several places. There was another index added in where Bulletin Signalétique was going to go.

09

Rayward

Was there an attempt to counter the influence of the English and American systems?

Dusoulier

No. I remember this, but it was one of the studies that didn’t lead anywhere. [laughter] I’m negative, but, you know, all these things were created—BNIST [Bureau National de l’Information Scientifique at Technique]. Because when you read that, you don’t see that. “À contrer la prolifération envahissante des publications scientifiques d’origine étrangère — c’est-à-dire qu’il dénonce la concurrence les Etats-Unis.” It’s stupid. You don’t want them; you don’t buy them. You cannot stop publishing. It’s so stupid even to say that.

This is one of the reasons why PASCAL database was built and didn’t stop doing chemistry. Because most of the publications were coming from the States. We could have said, “All right, we’ll take Chemical Abstracts.” We didn’t do it because we were afraid. Chemical Abstracts was warning that one day it would stop giving the information in chemistry to Europe and Japan. We said, “We have to continue. Imagine, that might or will happen.” This is how the Centre de la Bulletin Signalétique was created in 1939. Because we had no more information coming from abroad because of the War. My own opinion.

Rayward

Why would Chem. Abstracts stop? They were actually selling the information, so why would they stop?

Dusoulier

I don’t know. At one time, you know, there were strange ideas in America, and sometimes they continued. I can tell you, once, I had a conversation with Al [Albert] Gore [Jr.] on that. But that was much later. There was competition over research in chemistry. They were afraid that the Europeans and the Japanese would use the American databases to compete with the research done on chemistry. If you give all the information to the French researchers, they can do as well as you can do. The American Chemical Society said, “No, no, we don’t want any more of our information to be distributed.” There were rumors like that, particularly when Chemical Abstracts started distributing the tapes. Of course, they were always selling; the problem was not to buy because it’s much more expensive to do it yourself than to buy.

Rayward

So, in developing the PASCAL database in the area of chemistry, did you do all the indexing again, yourselves?

10

Dusoulier

We did everything ourselves. This is why I started negotiating with, for example, the American Physical Society, the Engineering Index, et cetera, so that they could provide us the information already indexed. We were prepared to buy.

Rayward

Did that work out?

Dusoulier

That worked with physics. You know, it’s only a problem of people. In Engineering Index, they were working too slowly. That was in the time of John Regazzi. Now, everything has changed. It was really difficult because we had to translate. The French researchers, at that time, wanted to have information in French.

Rayward

Has the audience of the Bulletin Signalétique changed over time?

Dusoulier

No. Our goal was always the same. The researchers from CNRS and the university were our target—about a hundred thousand people, in fact. And we had no problem of money. They asked us to recover some of the money, at least enough to cover the printing of Bulletin Signalétique. We recovered enough by selling it—only to pay for the printing, not for the entire operation. Nobody asked us to do better. Bulletin Signalétique was bought by libraries all over the world. When I traveled, I found Bulletin Signalétique in the most remote libraries, including Taiwan. I suppose that there are not too many people who can read French there. [laughter] But, still, they had Bulletin Signalétique.

Rayward

Most of the American research libraries take it either as a whole or have the selected parts for the different sciences.

Dusoulier

Yes! We had a lot of subscribers at one time—thirty-two thousand subscribers. There were a lot of subscribers to Bulletin Signalétique. But that was not the goal. The goal was really to serve French readers.

Rayward

So this was just an incidental financial benefit.

Dusoulier

Yes. But, of course, our administrators were very happy to find this money because they were able to spend less. The purpose was never to be a commercial organization. Never. This is why there was no competition, really, with other centers. We wanted to have cooperation to do our work better. That’s all. Not to compete.

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Voir aussi

Notes de la rédaction