IT training in small librairies.

The net set itself up progressively in France. By 1998, the local authorities, warned by several reports had-become aware of the numeric gap. They then tried to promote access to internet. Within the French territorial context, each local elective representative is free to define his or her stand on politics of culture. Small territorial divisions, such as parishes or very small communes (97% of which have less than 10,000 inhabitants in France) have been able to redefine their libraries' cultural programmes so as to democratise the use of these new IT tools. To achieve this, the library staff had to be trained, and the new national measure in favour of youth employment enabled the libraries to recruit specialised IT staff members. These small libraries offer supervised training courses so that each person can step into the cyber society. Their small size thus becomes an advantage as they can easily offer made to measure training courses in a friendly atmosphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]