Museum library and intercultural networking : the library of the Musée national des arts asiatiques Guimet (National Museum of Asian Arts, Paris, France)

The Library and archives department of the musée Guimet possess a wide array of collections: besides books and periodicals, it houses manuscripts, scientific archives – both public and privates, photographic archives and sound archives. From the beginning in 1889, the library is at the core of research and communications with scholars, museums, and various cultural institutions all around the world, especially China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. We exchange exhibition catalogues and publications dealing with the museum collections, engage in joint editions of its most valuable manuscripts (with China), bilingual editions of historical documents (French and Japanese) and joint databases of photographs (with Japan). Every exhibition, edition or database project requires the cooperation of the two parties, a curator of musée Guimet and a counterpart from the institution we deal with. The exchange is twofold and mutually enriching. Since some years we are engaged in various national databases in order to highlight our collection: a collective library catalogue, the French photographic platform Arago, and of course Joconde, central database maintained by the Ministry of culture which documents the collections of the main French museums. Other databases are available on our website in cooperation with Réunion des musées nationaux, a virtual exposition on early Meiji Japan, and a database of Chinese ceramics. All these online resources are intended as bridges to bring closer and expand mutual knowledge on Asian collections in museums. We have more and more tools and databases, but the mere multiplication of these prevent from grasping the entire scene. Another obstacle we have to overcome is of course the language barrier, by systematically editing in at least two languages. French is not anymore widely used and we need English, the de facto global language, but we should add Asian languages in our search tools. Due to budget constraints this is rarely the case in France but by networking we will be able to exchange knowledge and data between non-Western and Western cultures