In memoriam Raymond Bérard
On 29 July 2016, our colleague Raymond Bérard died after a long illness. Since 2009, when he took on the role of CERL Treasurer, Raymond was a very effective and involved member of the Board of CERL’s Directors, and his wise council is still sorely missed.
Entering the library world during the 1970s, he held responsibilities in various institutions, bothabroad at the beginning of his career (London), and in France at French University Libraries (e.g.Clermont-Ferrand from 1993 to 2001). In 2001 he became Director of Studies at ENSSIB (the French National School for Information Sciences and Libraries), where he had to foresee technical and strategic changes in librarianship, and to watch the evolution of researcher, student and citizens’ needs and demands, in order to best organise the training of future librarians.
In 2004, he was given the responsibility of the Centre technique du livre de l’Enseignement Supérieur (CTLES). This experience had a profound impact on the rest of his career. As CTLES is managing the conservation and communication of resources entrusted to it by the Higher Education Network Libraries, its director is tasked with pursuing an active negotiation policy with universities on a national scale, and developing shared services (remote document delivery, conservation plans). Raymond led that policy to a higher level, when in 2006 he was appointed director of the Agence Bibliographique de l’Enseignement Supérieur (ABES). Several decisive initiatives are to be credited to him during the seven years he spent at the head of ABES. He developed international partnerships (with OCLC, LIBER and CERL) and he created a scientific council.
He also worked to give ABES a central position for enhancing and disseminating the scientific production of Higher Education and Research institutions, to implement pooling services, to improve accurate and extensive description of resources (both electronic documentation and heritage collections), and to develop electronic documentation’s purchase. The growing success of the Journées de l’Abes, which became under his direction one of the most important professional events for French libraries, was one of the testimonies to the practical implementations of his vision.
His focus on collaboration with research structures, in particular with the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), led to his appointment as director of INIST (Institut national de l’Information scientifique et technique) in 2013. The strategy he developed there was eloquently titled ‘Better Sharing Knowledge’.
The library community lost a great professional, whose technical and managerial expertise was widely recognised. Although he never personally carried out research in the field of written heritage and special collections, he clearly identified both the potential this material offered for researchers, and the need to develop new methods of data dissemination to serve present and forthcoming Humanities scholars.
Yann Sordet, Bibliothèque Mazarine
• A further tribute is available here: ABES.