Madam Vice President

Madam Vice President

Ladies and Gentlemen

Dear colleagues

Dear friends

It is a real honor for Cemagref to receive you, coming from ten countries.

In the name of the Chief Executive Officer Roger Genet and of the regional Director Yves Confesson, I am happy to welcome you in Lyon.

You have decided to gather the 14th conference of the EURASLIC in Lyon after Brugge and Split and Karadag before : this is a very good choise !
In termes of population, Lyon is the second urban area in France counting near than 1.8 millions inhabitants. Since about twenty years, the city woke up from a « provincial sleep ». The population grows constantly, the economic activities too, the education and the research progress in quality, and arts take a major place. Lyon is today a european metropolis.
Lyon is historically an industrial city. In the 16th century, the gold age knew the development of the manufacturing and the business of the silk. More than five centuries later, the industrial activity is now focused on the pharmacy and the biotechnologies.
The city is modelled by both rivers, Rhône and Saône. They cross the town, from the north to the south, their confluence celebrate the marriage between the sweetness (someone would say the slowness) of the vineyards of Beaujolais and the countrysides of Burgondy, and the Alpin strength and rashness. The Rhône was a river difficult to master and it submerged repeatedly the city by its floods. Hydroelectric dams built by the national Company of the Rhône during the XXth century, gradually decreased the flow of certain sections, modified the hydraulic conditions and the functioning of the river. But the Rhône river knows also how to show itself friendly : the site of Crépieux Charmy, at the upstream of the city, is the largest resource in water in Europe, and its quality allows to distribute it without any treatment except chloride.
On the east bank of the quietened down Rhône, in 1957, the Claude Bernard university was settled on the site of La Doua.

The campus of La Doua constitutes the biggest universitary center in Lyon, including the university, and three « Grandes écoles », INSA, CPE and ENSSIB, the sciences of information and libraries national higher school. La Doua is also one of the most important research sites in Lyon and France, counting 1600 researchers from the universities, the schools and also the CNRS and in 2012 the Cemagref.

Yes, The Lyon’s center of Cemagref is about to leave the edges of the Saône river to join La Doua where works a large number of our scientific partners.

The 126 000 students among whom 5000 PhDs, who attend one of the 19 universities and schools of the Lyon center for research and higher education (the PRES Université de Lyon), make Lyon the second student city in France.

Somme words now about the libraries. The beginnings of the Bibliothèque Municipale de Lyon went back up 1527. The writtened and graphic heritage established all along the years is the second in the country just after the Bibliothèque Nationale de France heritage. Today, by a network of 15 settlements in the city, it offers its services to 2.5 millions of readers every year.

One of the main projets of the Université de Lyon is the Très Grand Instrument Documentaire (Very large documentary tool). It will be an European platform for the valuation, the distribution and the creation of the knowledge and also the information and the culture. A long tradition is here the springboard to the modernity.

The approximately two hundred persons of the Lyon’s center of Cemagref, among whom fifty researchers, work in research and support for public policies deals with rivers basins. Our goals are to better manage water resources, reduce vulnerability to risks of flooding and drought, gain knowledge on and reduce the impact of pollutants and toxins on aquatic ecosystems, restore good ecological status and achieve integrated management of environnemental resources. Our multi-disciplinary teams run experimental studies in situ and in the lab, build models, design tools to diagnose pollution, improve water-treatment processes and develop methods and concepts in support of the public decision-making.
Our scientific production counted in 2011, 114 publications in peer-reviewed journals, and also one hundred of papers in conference proceedings and 27 reports. Counting the other works, the total production reach 330 documents. I think Marie-Pascale Baligand, Anne-Laure Achard and Aline Bazergan contribute a lot to this success.

The Cemagref get involved in the development of several news tools as electronic publications or as the open archives. Cemadoc et CemOA are the Cemagref’s avatars. Your work on these new ways for the scientific and technical information is essential to insure the researchers they access the most complete and relevant information. It’s the same thing to insure them they publish in the appropriate media. So, the researchers’ training become more one of your main missions as information officers.

By preparing my comment, I read only 5% of the scientific articles are today published in free access magazines¹. It shows we are at the beginning of a new period of the knowledge’s society. The stakes which are, the one-line’s speed, the long-lasting filing, the increase of the visibility and the number of quotations of documents, constitute importants subjects of thought. I appreciated they appear at the right place in the program of the meeting.
I think you understand now why I said you Lyon is a very good place for your meeting : an old city with an ancient library, an important university, a town going to the reconquest of its rivers, and a center of the Cemagref completely dedicated to the water : what would the fishing net wish more ?
I sincerely hope you wil enjoy the stay in Lyon.

I am sure yours works will be productive and fruitful

I sincerely hope you won’t get lost in the Fort de Vaise underground passages tonight, and the ancient prisoners’ ghosts won’t tease you

I am sure you will appreciate to taste the Quai des Arts dishes

I am sure you will play with the birds at Villars les Dombes, just take care of the eagles and the vultures
And now, I warmly declare open the 14th biennal meeting ot the Euraslic and the 28th annual OMER meeting.

1 Clémence Joste – Évolutions de la communication scientifique - Bibliothèque centrale, Université Paris Diderot –18 février 2011