Tous les articles par Traian Oglinzanu

Working with the Raymonde Bonnefille Collection and the HAL Open Archive

As the adage goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. A mere photograph can capture emotions and details that simple sentences would have a hard time describing. As such, it was my pleasure to have worked on the Raymonde Bonnefille photograph collection in my second year interning at the MMSH. My goal with this article is twofold: explain the Raymonde Bonnefille photograph collection and provide my feedback on HAL, the open source archive on which these photographs are now available.  

In my first internship, I focused on what most people consider to be “traditional archives”. I would open a box filled to the brim with old newspaper articles and personal letters. Then I would proceed to write a short paragraph describing them before placing them back in the same box most likely never to be seen again. This year my source material will no longer be stored away in a closed room. My work, the photos of the “Raymonde Bonnefille collection”, are now available online on HAL for all to see. I have placed over 60 photos online taken in 1968, 1973, and 1974. Under each photo there is a description along with appropriate metadata. Mrs Bonnefille herself organised her photographs into five series, corresponding to the different missions, and documented the slides.1 Continuer la lecture de Working with the Raymonde Bonnefille Collection and the HAL Open Archive

  1. The digitisation was funded by R. Bonnefille’s research laboratory, CEREGE []

A journalist before the Internet – Eric Rouleau

Éric Rouleau had a career many people can only dream of: both a renowned journalist with the French publication Le Monde & Le Monde diplomatique and a seasoned diplomat who served as France’s ambassador to Tunisia from 1985-1986 and to Turkey from 1988 to 1991. Born in Cairo in 1926 as Elie Raffoul, Rouleau grew up in a Jewish-Egyptian family during a time of rising nationalism and anti-colonial ferment. After emigrating to France in the early 1950s, Rouleau changed his name and became known for his leftist politics and anti-imperialist stance taking him as far as the French Communist Party. His Middle Eastern and French background gave him not only linguistic fluency in Arabic, English, and French but also a high degree of cultural adaptability. He could befriend political leaders, army generals, and religious leaders in an instant. His thousands of articles and hundreds of interviews of the decades prove this very ability. Continuer la lecture de A journalist before the Internet – Eric Rouleau