65th IFLA Council and General Conference
Bangkok, Thailand, August 20 - August 28, 1999
Code Number: 036-146-E
Division Number: VI
Professional Group: Audiovisual and Multimedia
Joint Meeting with: -
Meeting Number: 146
Simultaneous Interpretation: Yes
Collecting, making known, and preserving oral heritage in a written civilization : a challenge for libraries
Joëlle Garcia
Bibliothèque nationale de France
Paris, France
Paper
Through, in an african civilization where orality is
essential, the writer Hampaté Bâ said "When an
old man die, a library is burning", this idea wasn't
conceivable in France until recently. In the French society,
memories are much more reliable when put down on paper.
History especially was constructed upon a critical analysis
on the oral tradition, opposed to the strength of the written
materials. For a very long time, French culture, shaped by a
state and centralizing civilization based on written matters,
have hushed orality up. Why do libraries, temples of books,
keep and present to the public oral documents in a
civilization based on writting ? Let's try and understand the
place of orality near written matters in France nowadays.
1. The birth of oral collections in France
Stammering in the 18th century, the study on
orality became a scientific branch of learning ; later on,
with the possibility of capturing human voice with sound
recordings, sound materials joined written ones in libraries.
In 1911, the dream of "making human speech eternal" incited
Ferdinand Brunot, as a linguist, to create the "Archives de
la Parole" ("archives of speech")in his laboratory of the
Sorbonne University. The aim was, for the first time in a
French institution, to set up a sound heritage for linguistic
study and research by collecting statements, folk tales,
traditionnal music, folklore, etc. In the "Archives de la
Parole", voices of famous people were also recorded, in a
period when broadcast didn't exist. In 1927, the "Archives de
la Parole" became the "Musée de la Parole et du
Geste", which was extended to include recorded images. Its
role were precise : collecting "speech of famous people,
diction and singing of great artists, folk tunes, decaying
dialects and patois". At the same time, electric recording
gave a boost to the collecting work. In 1932, Mr Roger
Dévigne was appointed Director of the Musée de
la Parole. It was his constant preoccupation to enlarge his
sound atlas by missions, studio recordings, exchanges,
donations. He succeeded in creating a sound laboratory and a
recording studio supplied with portable electric apparatus.
With this studio it became possible to reproduce the records
issued by the Musée de la Parole and above all to
increase the collections recorded on acetate discs.
In 1930, a musical section in the Guimet Museum was created.
In this section, you can find records on oral tradition
(especially music) from all part of Asia. This section and
the "Archives de la Parole" collaborated and published a
series, called "La Bibliothèque musicale" (the musical
library), of about ten records, between 1929 and 1932, on
musics from all over the world.
In the "Musée d'ethnographie du Trocadéro",
André Schaeffer, the famous musicologist and
ethnomusicologist, created in 1929 a Organology Department ;
in 1932, it became a Musical Ethnology Department with a
sound archive. In 1937, the museum was renamed "Musée
de l'Homme" (Museum of Mankind). This sound archives, born
with Asian and Oceanian records, is now devoted to
ethnomusicology of the non French world. Since 1935,
selections of sound recordings have been published, nowadays
under the label "CNRS-Musée de l'homme".
The "Musée des Arts et Traditions populaires" (folk
arts and traditions museum) was created in 1937 from the
French collections of the "Musée du Trocadéro"
(Trocadéro ethnographic museum ) ; the foreign
collections of this museum were given to the "Musée de
l'Homme" (Museum of Mankind). The birth of that museum
expresses the acknowledgement and the institutionalization of
the French ethnology. A chair of folklore was created in 1942
in the "Ecole du Louvre" (French high school of Arts) ; a
research laboratory has been associated to the museum since
1945 and became the "Centre d'Ethnologie française"
(French Ethnolgy Center) in 1966, by an agreement with the
"C.N.R.S." ("Centre national pour la Recherche scientifique -
French National Center for Scientific Research). The museum
has a sound archive which preserves unpublished sound
materials : interviews, collected ethnographical
informations, oral literature (tales and relations), vocal
and instrumental musics, and also discographic collections,
broadcasts, and the collections of a Museum of Song.
The "Phonothèque Nationale" (national sound library)
was set up on 8 April 1938 for the legal deposit of sound
recordings (records, audiocassettes and tapes) and to collect
all sound recordings of whatever nature, keeping on the
collecting policy of the Musée de la Parole. The
director Dévigne organized new expeditions to the
French provinces. As for unpublished original records, the
Phonothèque nationale was helping the researchers by
lending tapes and recorders to them. Therefore, in 1976 an
agreement with the C.N.R.S. (Linguistics and Musicology
Department) was signed, that allowed the researchers on
linguistics and musicology to give their tapes to these
archives. There are also agreements with researchers who are
working for other institutions or for their own. These
ethnographic, ethnomusicologic and linguistic documents are
shaped in interviews and songs. However, in the 1980's, this
source almost completely dried up.
In 1977, the "Phonothèque Nationale" was incorporated
into the "Bibliothèque nationale" and became its Sound
Archives and Audiovisual department. Since 1975,this
department has been the legal depositary for video recordings
and multimedia productions. With the birth of the
"Bibliothèque nationale de France", the name became
"Audiovisual department".
2. The oral heritage as a matter to study
Studying oral materials is now a fully-recognized science in
linguistics and ethnology, and much more recently, in oral
history.
Research centers develop in universities or high schools
("Ecole pratique des Hautes Etudes", "Ecole des Hautes Etudes
en Sciences sociales"), as, for instance, the "Centre de
Recherches méditerranéennes sur les
Ethnotextes, l'Histoire orale et les Parlers
régionaux" (C.R.E.H.O.P. - Mediterranean Research
Center on Ethnotexts, Oral History and Regional Dialects)
related to the Université de Provence. In the musical
and sociolinguistical fields, the "C.N.R.S." plays an
important role with its research units and linguistic or
ethnological programmes. For instance, the "C.N.R.S.", in a
continuation of the making of the Linguistic Atlas of France
published between 1902 and 1910, created a coordonated
research group on linguistic atlases and regional cultures
and dialects in France (called G.R.E.C.O.) in 1977.
Within the Ministry of Culture, the "Mission du Patrimoine
ethnologique" (Mission on Ethnologic Heritage) was set up in
1980. Right from the start, the "Mission du Patrimoine
ethnologique" and the "Conseil du Patrimoine ethnologique"
decided to gather their activities under four headings:
research, training, publishing and making available research
findings.
A denser and denser network of museums has been created.
Aimed to keep the memory of a place, of a language, of a
profession, of a skill or of an everyday object, they also
have collected sound materials, using their staff or with the
help of voluntary organizations. If the great interest of
oral traditions for linguistics or ethnology has been
understood early, it's only recently that the oral statements
have taken an historic value. Since the 80's, national,
regional or military archives, that had received sound
materials since 1960's, has begun to develop sound archives
using oral statements with an historical aim.
In the field of oral traditions, associations are now playing
an important role. A federation called
"Fédération des Associations de Musiques et
Danses Traditionnelles" (F.A.M.D.T. - Federation of
Associations of Traditionnal Music and Dance) was born in
1985 from the gathering of the associations that were
participating to a consultative committee on traditional
musics created by the Direction of Music and Dance of the
Ministry of Culture. It brings together researchers within a
network and organize research- workshops on ethnomusicology ;
it is active on starting and continuing training ; it works
for the standardization of descriptions of archives and
documents and publishes guidelines for documentation centers.
The F.A.M.D.T. brings together big regional associations like
"Dastum" (Bretagne), "Métive" (Poitou-Charente), the
"Conservatoire occitan" (Toulouse), etc. The "Conservatoire
occitan", created in 1970, is a place where you can find
ressources about oral traditions, and especially about music,
dance and traditionnal song. It puts at people's disposal a
library, a photographic library, a sound and also audiovisual
archive, with published and unpublished materials. It is
working to raise its collections by its own collecting
actions but sometimes receives materials collected by others
researchers as well.
The associative network called "Métive" has covered
the Poitou-Charentes area since 1972. It is composed by a
municipal museum, a hall, sound and audiovisual studios,
exhibition, training and congress rooms, and a center of
research and documentation on Orality called "Maison des
cultures" (House of cultures). It has done collecting
campaign about language, music and dance, songs and tales,
skills, etc. This centre preserves sound and audiovisual
materials of the Poitou-Charentes and Vendée areas but
also from others regions in France (Loire-Atlantique, Anjou,
Mayenne, Bretagne) and others countries (Canada, Italy, North
Africa).
The association called Dastum, created in 1972 and developped
by a network of volunteers, local teams and others
associations, gave itself the mission to collect, spread and
emphazise the ethnological heritage of Bretagne, with a
particular attention to the oral traditions and traditional
musics. Its searches cover the "historical" Bretagne, that is
to say including the Loire-Atlantique departement as well as
the Breton communities disseminated in France outside this
area. The materials collected by individuals or associations
are opened to the public in a central library.
3. Orality in the library
With these sound archives of museums, these libraries of
associations, having at their disposal collected sources,
skills on documentary and technical matters to use them, what
is the situation of traditional libraries ?
Public libraries sometimes have sound materials about oral
traditions or literature in their local collections. By
enriching their book collections with images and sound, they
act as some specialized libraries, archives or museum. For
example, the "Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon"
received sound recordings made in its region
"Rhône-Alpes", because of a special action, called
"Archives vivantes et ethnotextes" (living archives and
ethnotexts) organized by the "Musée des Arts et
Traditions populaires" and the "C.N.R.S." between 1977 and
1981. Libraries connected with universities or research
centers have the advantage of being close to the researchers.
Let's also quote as an example the library of the University
of Poitiers that keeps copies of recordings started twenty
years ago by a local researcher (Michel Valière).
However, dealing with legal aspects (searching for
researchers or entitled beneficiaries, writing agreements,
etc.), having the good machines to read a lot of different
carriers and formats (cylinders, direct cut discs, magnetic
tapes, etc.) and trained to old and new carriers technicians
and preserving documents in a different way from the paper
are problems to solve when you want to develop unpublished
materials. Digitilization allows to improve the access and
that way to give better answers to the increasing needs of
the users and to let the general public discover their oral
heritage.
In the "Bibliothèque nationale de France", the
collections of the Audiovisuel Department, inherited from the
"Archives" then the "Musée de la Parole" and later
from the "Phonothèque nationale", are still increasing
by legal deposit. By legal deposit, the library can collect
and preserve all the sound materials published or imported in
France. In this way oral traditions from Africa, North and
South America, West Indies, Middle East,Asia and Europe are
well represented, with labels like Ocora, Unesco
(Baerenreiter-musicaphon, Philips, Auvidis), Musée de
l'Homme, Musiques du monde, BAM, Chant du monde among others.
The Audiovisual Department, taking the opportunity of the
transfer of the collections to a new building, has undertaken
to give more access to its collections but also to other
collections, often ignored by the public or with a difficult
access, and to cooperate with other institutions to report
their collections. The patrimonial collection inherited from
the national sound library will be expanded with the major
acquisition programs currently under way, which mainly
involve unpublished and hitherto rarely available material.
Readers on the upper level will be able to consult an
audiovisual collection made up for the most part with
acquired audiovisual material and selected copies of
patrimonial material. These include the most important works
of reference in each discipline or genre. So far, such often
unpublished material has not been readily available for
consultation: as in the lower level collection, an open
access collection of useful printed literature will be
available. One of the trends used to select materials for the
public is called "Observatory of France". Some broadcasts, TV
shows, movies produced by associations, institutions
presenting areas, people, statements in the 60's and the 70's
are showing a portrait of France with constructed archives.
The "Bibliothèque nationale de France" has also
undertaken to make its collections in connection with
collections of others libraries. The Bibliothèque aims
to be the hearth of a network of French libraries or others
institutions (archives, institutes, etc.). The Audiovisual
Department, aware of the restraint in dealing with such
materials in a material, bibliographical, technical point of
view, wants to share these matters with the different bodies
in charge of sound archives in a cooperative way. In the
field of oral tradition, a project has been made with the
F.A.M.D.T., which will become a "pôle associé"
(associated center). In this agreement, the
"Bibliothèque nationale de France" will bring its
skill in bibliographic standardization and the possibility to
give access to some F.A.M.D.T. materials within the library.
The collections chosen are for "Dastum" breton heritage,
especially song and tale, for the Conservatoire occitan the
occitan heritage, especially song and dance in the Gascogne,
the Béran, The Languedoc occidental and the Lauragais,
for "Métive" the heritage of the poitevin and
saintongeais areas and especially in the Poitou, in the
Charente and in the Vendée and for the Mediterranean
and Human Science House the Provençal heritage in
music and oral tradition. According to the terms of the
agreement, the bibliographical records of the sound materials
that the "Bibliothèque nationale de France" will help
to do will be in the "Catalogue collectif de France" (French
Union Catalogue). The "Bibliothèque nationale de
France" has implemented a major program aiming to produce a
joint catalogue of all documents in French libraries. The aim
of the French Union Catalogue is precisely to supply
researchers with an integrated search system enabling them to
identify, localize their documents. A selection of documents
on oral traditions of each associations will be accessible
within the "Bibliothèque nationale de France".
Audiovisual in public libraries has been developping a lot
these last twenty years, due to more and more lendings of
discs and videocassettes. On the other hand, the listening in
the library with the aim of study or research is very
limited.
The money needed to start and maintain the collections, the
difficulty to re-use archives collected by other people, the
management of legal obligations, the preservation of specific
materials, etc. can only be managed by institutions having
great documentary and technical infrastructures
However, we have to keep in mind that French people are
finding a new interest in sound documents, concealed at other
times by the interest for images. The Ministery of Culture
helps make survey about the sound heritage. Publishers are
willing again to publish oral materials. The people's taste
for orality is keeping with a general movement of search for
one's roots. Will the use of networks and of the web change
the role of orality in the library ?
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