Centre National pour la Numérisation de Sources Visuelles

The Centre National pour la Numérisation de Sources Visuelles (CN2SV) is a CNRS's network for scientists data preservation in the digital age.

Main project (from 2006 to date) :

Visual scientific files Context: Scientific files With the difference of the exact sciences, the inheritance of the social sciences remains still largely unexploited. Only the scientific production itself caused questionings and numerical achievements (HAL) and few initiatives were launched concerning the files and the primary education documents produced by the researchers themselves. There is thus neither regulation nor real device allowing the collection and the conservation of documentary materials resulting from the activity of research itself. These funds are much more frequently preserved in the laboratories, the libraries, even in the families, that in services of files. Corpus/Domaines A know-how: history of sciences and technology In the framework of the SHS, the most significant projections creation numerical innovation of corpus were realized in the field of the History of sciences and technology. Since 1992, several university research centers developed strategies of computerization of the data which make school today and which are exported at the European level. Without having for as much the means of some of our European neighbors, the research centers and libraries specialized in the history of sciences and technology have invested for several years the field of the TIC. The CNAM (with ABU and the CNUM), the BNF (with Gallica), the Media library of history of sciences of the Cité des Sciences, propose numerical resources on line and accesses to documentary files in complete text. Example of a lack: Cultural surfaces The scientific inheritance on the cultural surfaces seems to us to have his own specificity, on the one hand thanks to the important place that y occupy the variety of materials of ground (notes, notebooks, sound, iconographic or audio-visual productions), on the other hand, except real efforts of conservation in ethnology, because of the absence of program making it possible to safeguard it and to diffuse it. Especially as from years 1950 constituted a vast producing scientific field of original sources whose conservation and valorization constitute an important stake. It agrees essential today an attention privileged to these funds (and personal records), to their conservation and their consultation. They are preserved on the one hand by collectors (resource centres of unit, libraries of research), on the other hand into clean by the researchers, and for whom, very often, none the minimal conditions of conservation is filled. Need for digitalization These data of investigation tend to disappear with time:

• Physical degradation of the supports; disappearance of the reading devices of some of these supports;

• Physical separation of the originals and their analyses; not publication of the data, neither census nor catalogues materials of investigations;

• dependence of these data with respect to their producers (formats, annotations, localization...).

As many reasons to be worried as of now transmission of these data and knowledge which they go back to yesterday or of today. Proposals for an experimentation With this project, it is a question for us of setting up and of validating a process and tools collaboratifs for work data processing and documentary, sure technical solutions, centered on the perenniality and the interworking of the data. This system allows the creation of networks, a decentralization of work and the accession with resources distributed where each one has the responsibility for its own data. This the project increases at different intervals according to the new prospects for financing and collaboration. The step wants to be pragmatic: the partners of this network know each other and share the same interest for the conservation of the scientific files. In addition they already had for some the occasion to work together on similar projects. They have of complementary know-how and resources on which to work. We insist on the importance of the participation of the resource centres and the libraries of research (resource centre REGARDS-ADES, ethnology network, UMS Caphes) and on the role of relay of the partners of this project near broader scientific networks (GIS, RTP, etc). It is also experimental: the diversity of the fields and the documents to be considered causes questioning profitable and will lead to the installation of exportable methodologies and to the creation of generic tools; patrimonial dimension ensuring the cohesion of the treatment of these resources. Two applicability :

• history of science and technology;
• cultural surfaces. Three types of collection of scientific files will be targeted:
• private funds of scientists (written, iconographic, sound, audio-visual documents);
• cartographic and photographic documentation joined together in the resource centres and the libraries of research;
• old iconographic scientific sources.

Three academic disciplines:

• Modern and contemporary history;
• Social anthropology and Ethnology;
• Geography.