Merci.
You're going to visit Bishop's this afternoon, and Madam Teasdale will be with you. So she could provide
other ideas about this major project to ensure that you get a good understanding of what we are trying to do.
This project is an initiative by the university, with the support of the Townshippers', to try to be a learning commons. And to some degree this is the area in which potentially we could access federal funds, possibly through the 2003 action plan, possibly through other federal initiatives or funding opportunities. The idea behind it is to replicate the success stories of francophone communities outside Quebec by having a place where people can have resources and feel a community involvement. The idea is to create a larger library, as I said in my little discourse
which would be the equivalent, in the Eastern Townships, of the Grande Bibliothèque nationale in Montreal.
And we would provide an open-door policy to the community, as opposed to being the university library. It is more a resource totale that will provide as much as possible all kinds of services to the community, our students, the anglophone community in the region, and the francophone community that wants to access English language material or information that isn't quite as available elsewhere.
However, libraries these days aren't just buildings with books; they are branchée everywhere. They are completely connected. We hope as much as possible, in the plan we are presenting to various levels of government and organizations, to provide a service to what we would call the off-island anglophone community to access information, to provide services, to be a community resource similar to the way certain very positive occurrences have happened in the French-speaking communities outside Quebec.