Discovering culture and politics:
Dispatches from Paris
Dispatch 2
June 14, 2007
Did I say I was ready to go? Scratch that. Getting out of bed when you're jet-lagged is pretty much impossible. However, somebody in my apartment building decided that nine o'clock would be a great time to get to work with what sounds like a jackhammer, so I drag myself to the shower and then head out for some preliminary grocery shopping. I'm living in the heart of the Latin Quarter, about a block away from the famous Jardin du Luxembourg, and I can't wait to explore the neighborhood. Before stepping out the door, I glance over my map, a handy, semi-discreet little booklet called Paris Practique par Arrondissement. I decide to head up Boulevard Raspail, passing overflowing cafés, kissing couples, and knots of high school kids who are smoking and gossiping faster than I thought was humanly possible.
The Bibliothèque nationale de France, site François Mitterrand.Credit Sarah Weaver
After dropping off my groceries at my apartment, I hop on the metro and head south to the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, site François Mitterrand. The National Library has a couple of different locations in Paris, including one near the Opéra, one near the Stock Exchange, and this one, all the way out in the 15th Arrondissement. On the metro, I'm squished between a group of German guys with suitcases, an irritated-looking woman with long crimson nails and a Dior purse, and a young French couple exchanging sweet nothings in heavily accented English. I try to keep my balance, starting to get a little bit anxious about my arrival at the library. To find the periodicals I need, I will have to be approved for access to the research library, a lower level reserved for, well, researchers. Will they all laugh at me because I'm just some silly little American college kid?
When I finally enter the library, nobody there looks like they are even thinking about laughing. Professors, authors, lecturers, librarians...everyone is on a mission—books to find, theses to write, truths to discover! An unsmiling security officer greets me at the door, searches my bag, and then waves me through the metal detector. I thank him and step into the library's silent lobby. To my left, a tall Scandinavian man with glasses and a briefcase is browsing around the gift shop (in case you aren't tired of books yet by the time you leave the library), and to my right, a large grey sign urges me to discover the Café Est. Straight ahead is a long reception desk. I approach cautiously and ask about the Research Library; one of the librarians directs me to a room marked Orientation des lecteurs—Reader Orientation.
I walk into a small waiting room furnished with a couple of grey leather chairs and a reception desk. Above the desk, an LED sign displays the number 467. After a few seconds, the sign beeps, now showing 468. I take a number and sit down in one of the chairs, looking around the waiting room. There are only a couple of other people here. It must have been busy in the morning for them to be at 468 already!
Before I can get too comfortable, the sign displays my number and a short, bald man appears at the end of an adjoining hallway. He gives me a nod, takes the slip of paper with my number on it, and leads me back to a cubicle. "Research library?" he says in French, sitting down behind his desk and motioning for me to take a seat across from him. I nod. "Your passport?" I hand it to him and he examines it under his desk light. "And the purpose of your visit?" He hands me back my passport. What is this, immigration at the airport? I tell him I am here to do research on Francophonie. "Do you have a reference letter?" he asks. Fortunately, Dr. Hale had forewarned me about this and given me a letter of recommendation that explained my goals at the library. I present the note, which the librarian scans, mumbling to himself, "Oui...oui...d'accord, ça ira." Looking up at me, he says that they will give me a library card and that I should go back to the waiting room and take a ticket to get my picture taken. My picturetaken?
I am not in the waiting room long before younger man appears at the end of another hallway and summons me back to a photo booth. He charges me 18 Euros for a card that will allow me to enter the library 15 times before the end of the year. Then he asks to see my passport (didn't we already do this part?) and then snaps my picture.
While the photo processes and the card prints, the librarian pulls out a map of the library and explains how to get around. The research library, called the Rez-de-jardin, is divided into rooms by subject. Rooms K through M contain books on philosophy, history, and social sciences, rooms N and O focus on law, economy, and politics, and P is the audiovisual room. When I tell him that I'm looking for periodicals, the librarian tells me that room P is my best bet. There, I can look at microfilms of pretty much any periodical since its first publication. I thank him and he hands me my library card. With my picture in the corner, birth date, nationality, and address printed on it, it looks like a driver's license. I laugh to myself—I think it's easier to get a driver's license in the US than it is to get a library card in France!