ABOUT

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


The mission of FTS is to provide access to level-appropriate Francophone literature for students or individuals learning the French language. 
The objectives of FTS are:

  • To provide an organized collection of French literature by level of fluency.
  • To encourage reading of authentic French-language texts.
  • To facilitate acquisition of reading skills in the French language.

 

FTS collects classic works of French literature, including books, short stories, plays, poems, and sound recordings that are typically studied in secondary and university level French courses.  All works in the collection must meet certain criteria, which are as follows:

  • All works must be in the public domain.
  • All works must be written in French.
  • All works must be written by Francophone authors.
  • All works must be one of the following types:  book, short story, play, poem, or sound recording.
  • All works must be one of the following formats:  html, pdf, txt, mp3, mp4.
  • All works must be from the Middle Ages to the present and typical of those studied in secondary or university level courses.
  • All works must offer full-text access.

 

 

The FTS collection is organized by four indexes:  title, author, level of difficulty, and type of literature.  Items of any type, including books, short stories, plays, poems, and sound recordings, may appear under any of the index categories.  Similarly, item formats, such as html, pdf, mp3, or mp4, will appear in every index category.  Since few sound recordings will be part of the collection, they will not be listed under a separate index.

 

 


To describe items, FTS will use simplified Dublin Core.  The following fields will be included in each item description:

  • Title
  • Creator
  • Subject
  • Description
  • Publisher
  • Date
  • Type
  • Format

 

 


To access materials, users may enter keyword queries in French into the Google Custom Search engine on the FTS homepage (www.msloveday.com/FTS/fts.html).  In addition, several index pages will be offered.  Users may browse the collection by author, title, level of difficulty, and type of literature.  Under each heading, works will be listed alphabetically. 

 

 


To improve service for patrons, FTS will offer several helpful items to assist users.  FTS will feature a help link on each page that will bring users to a Frequently Asked Questions web page.  If users cannot find the needed answer, they may e-mail the reference librarian with any questions.  Though FTS would ideally offer online reference services, one librarian cannot be online at all times.  However, all reference e-mails must be answered within a 24-hour period

 

 

. 

FTS was built using Dreamweaver.  Every page has the FTS heading and menu bar to ensure a consistent, clean look for the library.  The menu bar on every page will feature six tabs: home, author, title, level of difficultly, genre, help, and a link to www.msloveday.com, the host site.  The menu bar will not feature a link for the current page.  The keyword search engine will be located on the home page. Each library item is catalogued using Dublin Core. However, since the library items have an .lbi extension, the Google Custom Search engine does not automatically search for the Dublin Core metadata. In the future, FTS will build a customized search engine that includes .lbi files in result pages.  

 

 


To evaluate the library, FTS will ask both students and French instructors to perform searches on the site for specific items.  After the search exercise, the students and instructors will provide feedback on how to improve FTS.  These evaluations will be performed at least once per year to ensure that FTS is meeting its users’ needs. 

Since FTS does not digitize items, the librarian’s primary maintenance responsibility is to add new materials to the collection.  If possible, the FTS librarian will add new items every month if they comply with the collection policy.  Possible future enhancements include improved display for digital text and the addition of more audio recordings. 

In the future, FTS will build its own customized search engine so that users may perform queries by using Dublin Core metadata. The FTS custom search engine will return more relevant results.