The French digital mathematics library provided by Mathdoc corresponds to the Numdam (NUMérisation de Documents Anciens Mathématiques) programme launched in 2000. Numdam’s purpose is based on the very nature of mathematical documentation, which is characterised by its usefulness on very large time scales, including those of different sciences, sometimes asynchronously. As a result, chemists, physicists or economists often have recourse to outdated results (including entire fields of mathematics that are no longer relevant to mathematicians). The originality of Numdam rests on four factors:
Scientific accreditation
Only texts that have been approved and published are presented, excluding pre-publications.
Open access
Free access to documents, after a possible variable restriction of 2 to 10 years established by the publishers.
Complete collections
Journals are digitised from their beginning (sometimes mid-19th century) and recent articles are introduced as soon as they are published, when possible.
Hyperlinks
A great deal of attention is paid to data enrichment using matching which establishes links between the references of published articles quoted in bibliographies and the major mathematical bibliographic reference databases.
Content
Numdam provides access to full texts of mathematical research publications:
in 48 journals and 38 seminars
in 7 collections out of which 4 lecture notes
amounting to…
Features
Navigation
Mathdoc has developed effective and ergonomic interfaces for browsing Numdam collections. Users can therefore browse Numdam collections volume-by-volume. Within each volume, they can then browse article-by-article. Users can then find additional information by clicking on the title of an article to access its full record, including a summary, bibliography, links to zbMATH, Jahrbuch and MathSciNet, BibTeX records, RIS or EndNote for export, How to cite / cite by, etc. The breadcrumb trail allows users to navigate from one article to another or return to the collection record in one click.
Search interface
An advanced search interface also allows for multi-journal and multi-criteria access. The following fields are searchable: journal, author, title words, years, and full text. The interface also offers the possibility to refine the search using bibliographies. It is then possible to combine a search on an author who quotes another, which opens interesting perspectives during bibliographic searches.
Phases and Funding
From 2019 on, articles from the centre Mersenne mathematics journals are posted in Numdam one year after they were published online on the journal pages.
In 2021, Mathdoc digitally published ten years (2009-2019) of the Journal de la Société Française de Statistiques with its bibliographic references, as well as the Publications Mathématiques de l’IHÉS (2011-2014), the Cahiers GUTenberg and handwritten lecture notes by Jean-Pierre Serre.
In 2022, the acquisition of a scanner for Numdam allowed the digitization of volume 15 (1870) of the 2nd series of the Journal de Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées.
In 2023, years 1935 to 1945 of Journal de Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées, years 2015 to 2017 of Publications Mathématiques de l’IHÉS, and the 2017 volumes of EDP Sciences are displayed on Numdam. The metadata for Rendiconti del Seminario Matematico della Università di Padova is available for the years 2018 to 2023. Finally, the KBART file has been improved to display the latest volumes / numbers available in Numdam. Years 2002 to 2021 of the journal Comptes Rendus Mathématique are also added.
In 2024, the Thèses d’Orsay (1971-2012) join Numdam, resulting from the cooperation between the Bibliothèque mathématique Jacques Hadamard (BJH) and Mathdoc initiated in 2015.
In 2016, Mathdoc received specific resources from the IDEX of Grenoble for the digitisation and online publication of the Astérisque collection published by the SMF. This collection represents a substantial corpus (277 volumes, 70 504 pages, 1 723 articles), and involved an extensive production time that mobilised several people in terms of documentation and IT. Several seminars were also uploaded online over this period:
Phase IV of the Numdam initiative was approved by the BSN5 call for tenders launched by the MESR (Bibliothèque Scientifique Numérique) in 2013. It also benefited from the financial support of the IRMAR Laboratory of Rennes and the associated Labex (Centre Henri Lebesgue) and from the moral support of the SMF and the SFdS. Funding was received in early 2014 for an 18-month work schedule. The titles of the works included at that time are:
A selection of works by Laurent Schwartz were digitised in 2008 to complete the corpus published in facsimile by the SMF and the École Polytechnique. Mathdoc then continued the digitisation of journals, seminars and theses with the CNRS’ financial support:
The years 2006-2009 also mark the start of acquisitions of natively digital documents. For some journals, these acquisitions supplement existing digitised collections in order to create a comprehensive and unified archive. This is the case for: Annales de l’institut Henri Poincaré – section B Probabilités et statistiques et section C Analyse non linéaire, Annales de la faculté des sciences de Toulouse, Annales Mathématiques Blaise Pascal, Annales scientifiques de l’École Normale Supérieure, Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Bulletin de la Société Mathématique de France, Cahiers de Topologie et Géométrie Différentielle Catégoriques, Diagrammes, Journées équations aux dérivées partielles, Journal de théorie des nombres Bordeaux, Publications Mathématiques de l’Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques, Rendiconti del Seminario Matematico della Università di Padova, Revue de statistique appliquée, Séminaire Bourbaki, Séminaire de théorie spectrale et géométrie.
For recent articles (protected by a moving-wall), Numdam contributes to their visibility by providing entire metadata to readers, improving them with links. The following journals and seminars are gradually being integrated into Numdam via different modes of acquisition:
The second phase, financed from a provision of the initial budget, extends the online offer to the following journals and seminars:
In addition, as part of the BRAIN programme (Bibliothèque Rhône-Alpes d’Information Numérique), the CURA (Conférence Universitaire Rhône-Alpes) and the Rhône-Alpes Region have jointly decided to assist in the implementation of projects for digitisation and to enhance the heritage collections of universities. Mathdoc was selected to carry out the digitization of the mathematical seminars held at the IHP (Groupe d’étude d’algèbre, Groupe d’étude de théories stables, Séminaire Bourbaki and the Cahiers du séminaire d’histoire des mathématiques), i.e. 32,000 pages in total.
In 2005, funding from the Paul-Sabatier University of Toulouse enabled the digitization of the Annales de la faculté des sciences de Toulouse published between 1887 and 2002. This collection represents approximately 36 000 pages and more than 1 000 articles. In 2006, the École Polytechnique contacted Mathdoc and financed the digitisation of 31 volumes of the cahiers du Séminaire Équations aux dérivées partielles (Polytechnique) also known as the Séminaire Goulaouic-Schwartz published between 1969 and 1996. Lastly, in 2007, the CNRS specifically subsidised the digitisation of the Nouvelles Annales de Mathématiques.
As of year 2000, the French Ministry’s Research Department allocates a grant to the national initiative “Documentations Numériques en Mathématiques” (Digital Documentation in Mathematics) led by the CNRS and carried out by Mathdoc. This fund allows the implementation of the first pilot phase of digitisation. The online publication starts in 2003 and concerns 4 journals, a series of proceedings and a series of memoirs published either by academic or general publishers:
Team
Management and scientific leadership
Evelyne Miot
Scientific manager
Olivier Labbe
IT manager
Thierry Bouche
Scientific advisor
Gaël Rémond
Scientific advisor
Administrative and financial management
Céline Talbi
Administrative and financial manager
Documentation and Cooperation
Céline Smith
Documentation and cooperation manager
Isabelle Costerg
Documentalist
Taban Danaei
Documentalist
IT and development
Patrick Bernaud
Developer
Franck Lontin
System network administrator
See the documents produced by Mathdoc on Numdam.