English summary

Children's Internet Protection Act : Filtering tools and censorship in public libraries.
Catherine Bernier

"The legal document entitled "Children Internet Protection Act" (CIPA), in effect as of December 21, 2001, requests that American public libraries install screening devices on their Internet access work stations. Failure to do so will result in a situation where they will no longer qualify for important federal grant programs. The short history of this law's coming into effect and of the reaction that it has engendered in the heart of the American library science community are a good point of departure for a reflection on the relatively new phenomenon of censorship on the Internet and, by extension, on censorship applied to electronic documents."

The library of Orange facing censorship
Audrey Attia

This article presents the testimony of Catherine Canazzi, former administrator of the public library of the municipality of Orange in France. In June 1995, Jacques Bompart of the Front National, an extreme right French party, wins the municipal elections. He takes control of the public libraries acquisition policy and, under the cover of a "rebalancing" of the collections, transforms the library into a medium for extreme right wing literature. This is completely, legal since, in France, public libraries are under the jurisdiction of the municipalities. Catherine Canazzi retraces how the municipal power perverted the function of the public library, centre of pluralism and culture, an underlines the major issues linked to the acquisition policy. She talks about the questioning of the professionalism of the library staff and the difficulty, always present, of combating such practices.

When faith and culture meet
Jacques Messier

"The expansion of theology to include religious studies implies a readjustment of the library collections in social sciences. By participating with the Faculty of theology and the classical and medieval studies departments in the acquisition of documentary resources necessary to maintain the already well finished collections, the Université de Montréal library administration has understood the necessity of this turnaround. From the printed page to electronic documents, nothing has been overlooked to insure the survival of these collections and thus to contribute to the enrichment of the department of social sciences. The article presents the different strategies put together since 1990 to obtain this result and illustrates the project with concrete examples."

Succession : who is the next ?
William M. Curran

One fundamental component of sound administration is the concept of succession, i.e., mentoring and training those promising employees who show aptitudes for leading the organization when the present senior administrators vacate their positions. For a variety of reasons, academic libraries are at risk of finding themselves without a potential pool of experienced successors. This is an alarming situation, which other institutions have faced in the last few years.