Research Guide: Surf, Watch and Talk: French Popular Culture

Fall 2005

Sources for Background Information:
These sources on France and French culture are helpful for context for your topics, and to point to other trustworthy sites or sources.

Encyclopedia of Contemporary French Culture, 1998. Reference 944.0803 E56e A print source on popular and high culture in France, with brief bibliographies.

Lexis/Nexis Academic Universe http://www.depts.drew.edu/lib/research.html This proprietary database provides articles from French language news publications, going back two to five years. On the Library's Research Resources page, select Lexis/Nexis Academic from the "General" menu. Click "News" on the first page, and then select "Non-English Language News from the "News Category." Internet Directories: These list recommended public web sites on French culture in general: ClicNet http://clicnet.swarthmore.edu/ A useful set of links on elements of French culture, geared to students.

Bibliothèque Publique d’Information http://www.bpi.fr/ A very select list of sites, created by a Parisian public library. Click on "Recherche documentaire"and then choose "Sites sélectionnés."

AdmiNet France/Régions et territoires http://www.adminet.fr/ Click on "Régions et territoires" for pages from the various regions of France.

Les pages de Paris http://www.paris.org/parisF.html Three guesses what the focus of this site is!

Le Ministère de la Culture http://www.culture.gouv.fr/ Has links to official pages of regions, and includes information on cultural events.

WESSWeb: French Studies Web http://www.library.uiuc.edu/ala/alawess/index.html A directory maintained by the Western European Studies Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries.

Tennesee Bob's Famous French Links http://www.utm.edu/departments/french/french.html A massive collection of French links (currently claims 10,000), organized by subject.

French Resources on the Web http://www.library.adelaide.edu.au/guide/hum/french/ From the University of Adelaide.

Some general Internet directories that might be useful to search:
BUBL Information Service
http://bubl.ac.uk/link/
An academic, UK-based directory of recommended sources, with annotations. Tends to be skewed in favor of academic sites. Click on 'Countries' on the entry page.

Yahoo! France
fr.yahoo.com
Google France
http://directory.google.fr
The French versions of two all-time favorites, with distinctly popular audiences.

Voila.fr
One of France's favorite directories.

Finding Sources on a Narrow Topic:
Use Internet search engines to find web resources on specific aspects of French society and culture. If the engine permits, you might restrict searching to the .fr domain (but be careful -- not everything French has an .fr designation!). If a search engine originated outside of France, odds are good that you'll have to use English boolean operators. Recommended search engines include:

Google France/Recherche avancée
ww.google.fr/advanced_search?hl=fr
Very large, with somewhat limited search options, but often yielding impressively pertinent results by ranking sites by the number of other sites that have linked to them. This favors the older, established sites, but does identify the most highly regarded. Google has recently expanded its ability to search non-html files, and does well retrieving image files. When you have reasonably limited results, it's helpful to request the "omitted results." And, yes, the regular Google search screen is also available at http://www.google.fr

Lycos France: Recherche avancée
http://www.lycos.fr/search/options.html 
The French search engine, with options for searching images, Francophone sites only, lots o' limits.

HotBot
http://www.hotbot.fr
You can limit by geographic origin.

AllTheWeb
http://www.alltheweb.com/advanced
One of the largest of the search engines, but with less flexible search options than the other engines provide. Use "Advanced Search" for better search capabilities. (Used to be called FastSearch.)

Nomade
http://nomade.aliceadsl.fr/
A popular French search engine. AND it uses French boolean operators (ou, sans, et -- although et is the default)

Kartoo
http://kartoo.com
This is a metasearch engine, which pulls results from several major engines. Search capabilities are correspondingly limited, but the results are visually mapped, showing interconnections that some people find very useful.

For more information on web searching, check out a local page, Internet Searching, (www.users.drew.edu/jcaldwel/internet.html) or, for more depth, UC Berkeley's great tutorial, Finding Information on the Internet (http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/FindInfo.html#Outline)

Questions? Call 3588 or email us at reference@drew.edu!

Library Home Page: http://www.depts.drew.edu/lib/
Drew Library Catalog: http://catalog.drew.edu
Research Resources: http://www.depts.drew.edu/lib/research.html

J.L. Caldwell 10/05
http://www.users.drew.edu/jcaldwel/pieretti.htm