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Le 10 juin 1940, alors que les armées allemandes, qui étaient reparties à l'attaque sur un large front, quelques jours auparavant, approchaient rapidement de Paris, la Bibliothèque Nationale fermait ses portes au public. Les collections les plus précieuses des quatre grands départements (Manuscrits, Imprimés, Estampes et Médailles) ainsi que celles des bibliothèques Mazarine, de l'Arsenal, de Versailles, du Conservatoire ou de l'Opéra (toutes ces bibliothèques étant rattachées à la Bibliothèque Nationale) avaient été mises sous caisses dès la fin d'août 1939 et évacuées en province dans deux châteaux réquisitionnés à cet effet: le château d'Ussé en Touraine, d'abord, puis à partir du 22 mai 1940 celui de Castelnau, dans le midi de la France. Ces deux dépôts avaient été organisés par le conservateur honoraire du Cabinet des Estampes, Monsieur P.‐A. Lemoisne, secondé par des gardiens.

Avant d'aborder une étude qui ne peut, disons‐le tout de suite avoir le même contenu que l'excellent article de Mr Bowyer, paru en 1963 dans cette mme revue pour la Grande‐Bretagne, il convient de rappeler brièvement les grandes lignes de la structure universitaire française et de marquer les limites de notre enquête.

The French are becoming world leaders in networked information. The key to this development is the immediate access to the general public provided by their national Minitel system. New networked libraries are being built, existing libraries are going online, and the crisis‐ridden French publishing industry is looking to networked information for its salvation. The French approach to networking offers interesting lessons for the Internet, not least because the French approach may ultimately be considered more attractive than the Internet′s for developing networked information in Asia and elsewhere

The French, and increasingly French libraries, are online on the networks. French print publishing is in trouble. Online full text is one of the promising developments in the forefront of network development. Despite some small but stubborn problems such as copyright and pricing, online full text may represent a way out of their problems for the publishers. One new Minitel service and the general direction of the largest French publisher may indicate an impending marriage of the two sets of problems, and of their possibilities.

Until recent years in French libraries works emanating from or sponsored by a corporate body were considered anonymous and catalogued as such. And yet, how many librarians working in research libraries could have felt entirely satisfied with this method? Who has not heard readers' complaints and criticisms on the subject? How many of us have not attempted to remedy this by more or less empirical solutions? For works of this kind, indeed, the strict rule of entering anonymous works under the first word of the title often appeared absurd and liable to prevent the reader from finding them. How could a research worker find in the alphabetical author and title catalogue of a university library a given collective publication issued by a research laboratory well known to specialists, if the title‐page of the publication happened to begin with neither the name of the laboratory, nor with the title of the treatise or report in question?

Describes interlending activities in French academic libraries. Explains their use of new technologies including electronic document delivery and electronic mail. Charging policies are discussed and a list of specialised resource centres is provided.

Throughout the world there are only a few major national libraries: the British Library in London, the National Library of Congress in Washington and the National Library of Canada. In 1995, the new Bibliothèque Nationale de France is due to be inaugurated. It aims to the world's first 21st Century national library and will offer readers and researchers 300 computer assisted reading stations, known in French as PLAO, from which digitised documents from the Bibliothèque's enormous archives can be read, annotated and compiled into in‐depth research projects on a wide variety of subjects.

The first European conference on research into the management of information services and libraries (EURIM) was held at Unesco Headquarters, Paris, from 20–22 November 1973. It was conceived and organized by Aslib with the co‐sponsorship of the Association Nationale de la Recherche Technique, the Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, the Consiglio Nazionale delle Richerche, the Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Dokumentation, NOBIN and NORD‐FORSK. The organization was an exercise in international co‐operation; the outstandingly high attendance—touching the 300 mark—could never have been achieved without the energetic publicity efforts of all the sponsors. Nor was this attendance confined to the sponsoring countries. Delegates were drawn from Algeria (2), Austria (3), Belgium (17), Czechoslovakia (1), Den‐mark (2), Finland (1), France (105), Germany (20), Ireland (1), Italy (6), Luxem‐bourg (3), Netherlands (37), Norway (4), Portugal (1), Roumania (2), Sweden (3), Switzerland (7), Tunisia (1), Turkey (2), United Kingdom (78), USA (2), Yugoslavia (1). The luxurious accommodation and impeccable arrangements at Unesco made an ideal setting for this event and artistic relief of the highest order was provided by the conducted visit, arranged by the Delegation General de la Recherche Scientifique et Technique with the generous co‐operation of the Directeur des Bibliothèques de France, the Directeur du Bureau National de Documentation and the Directeur des Musées de France, to the outstanding exhibition of paintings by Georges Braque at the Musée de l'Orangerie.

With the closure of the Centre de Prêt at the Bibliothèque Nationale, and the prospect of integration of higher grade information systems, the French interlending system is currently facing a period of reduced functionality. If few significant changes have been noticed for the internal requests of French readers, the same cannot be said for foreign libraries which are experiencing difficulties in locating documents in French libraries. This paper aims to help users to understand the present situation, and to offer some pointers, which can only be a temporary solution pending the launch of the Catalogue Collectif de France (Union Catalogue of France).