| La lettre du GERPISA | no 104 (juin 1996) |
Editorial - Michel Freyssenet
GERPISA has two types of activity: carrying out programs linked to major issues affecting the automobile industry, which require for their analysis an international and pluridisciplinary mobilization of knowledge and competences, but also, as certain speakers during the discussion evaluating the past four years mentioned, providing services and publications that continually contribute to making the network a tangible and lively one : La Lettre, bibliography lists, "available articles", colloquium Acts, book reviews, GERPISA's directory, and our documentation center. Of course, these services and publications could be improved. However, others could ameliorate and intensify exchanges even more, and rapidly provide information, data, and increasingly pertinent studies to the network's members.
For the time being, the GERPISA server contains La Lettre dating back to its number 97 issue, with articles regrouped into rubrics, not forgetting bibliographies dating back to the beginning of 1995. While continuing to integrate documents as they are presented, we are nevertheless going to go back in time, at least to the beginning of our first program. We have a project to integrate into the server the data base of the documentation center, book reviews, and eventually "available articles". A general bibliography on the automobile industry will soon be published in an issue devoted to the Acts. It will include all references listed in successive bibliographies established by Patrick Fridenson since GERPISA's origin. This covers approximately 14 years. It will be integrated into the GERPISA server and continually updated. A second edition of the Annuaire Statistique Retrospectif de l'Industrie Automobile (Retrospective Statistical Directory of the Automobile Industry; the first one dates back to 1987) is in the working. Data provided will go up to 1995, and the international portion will be highly developed. The possibility of putting it in the server is also being studied. The establishment of economic and social data by firm, which was not carried out for all firms during the first program, could be re-initiated and thus constitute an irreplaceable documentary tool for everyone. Starting up a Summer University program for PhD students had been considered. This project could very well be adopted during the second program and extended at least to Europe. Research exchange programs could be organized between our institutions. We should also think about the possibility of publishing a book per year instead of postponing publication of prepared books to the end of the program. Many network members only have a bookish or indirect knowledge of the automobile . Visits to plants could be systematically organized and carried out. One or several discussion forums on the Internet could also be foreseen. Public conferences with automobile industry directors, political authorities, and union leaders could be organized in France and elsewhere and even become large-scale events. They could also turn into discussion seminars with these various actors, thus allowing for more profound exchanges. As you can all see, ideas and projects are not lacking.
How should they be set into motion? The small permanent GERPISA nucleus in Evry can not do it alone. In order to distribute work, tasks, and responsibilities, a certain number of necessary operations could be handled by one or the other international network member who would be assisted in this by his/her institution. Such an organization offers the advantage of concretely implicating a larger number of members in GERPISA's existence. Several services and publications were accomplished (bibliography, available articles, statistical directory, social and economic data, etc...) only because certain network members accepted to provide the necessary information and documents. Such a system only lasts and becomes richer if everyone participates and if there is reciprocity. One could imagine, for example, that this or the other service/publication would only be available to those who contributed to it. A precise and specific notebook could begin recording the manner of contributing and reference guarantees. This would allow for the integration of new documents as well as the name of the provider without having to resort to excessive editing.