#Researcher at the INALF (Institut national de la langue française - National Institute of the French Language) The purpose of the INaLF -- part of the France's National Centre for Scientific Research (Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS) -- is to design research programmes on the French language, particularly its vocabulary. The INaLF's constantly expanding and revised data, processed by special computer systems, deal with all aspects of the French language: literary discourse (14th-20th centuries), everyday language (written and spoken), scientific and technical language (terminologies), and regional languages. This data, which is an very important study resource, is made available to people interested in the French language (teachers and researchers, business people, the service sector and the general public) through publications and databases. Christiane Jadelot is an expert in computerized lexicography. She is currently in charge of putting the eighth version of the Dictionnaire de l'Académie française (Dictionary of the French Academy) (1932-1935) online. [Interview 08/06/1998 // Interview 10/08/1999] *Interview of June 8, 1998 (original interview in French) = What is the history of the INaLF website? At the request of Robert Martin, the head of INaLF, our first pages were posted on the Internet in mid-1996. I helped set up these web pages with tools that cannot be compared to the ones we have nowadays. I was working with tools on Unix, which were not very easy to use. We had little practical experience then, and the pages were very cluttered. But the INaLF thought it was very important to make ourselves known through the Internet, which many firms were already using to sell their products. As we are a "research and services" organization, we have to find customers for our computer products, the best known being the text database Frantext. I think Frantext was already on the Internet (since early 1995), and there was also a draft version of volume 14 of the TLF (Trésor de la langue française). So we had to publicize INaLF activities in this way. It met a general need. = How did using of the Internet change your professional life? I began to really use it in 1994, with a browser called Mosaic. I found it a very useful way of improving my knowledge of computers, linguistics, literature... everything. I was finding the best and the worst, but as a discerning user, I had to sort it all out and make choices. I particularly liked the software for e-mail, file transfers and dial-up connections. At that time I had problems with a programme called Paradox and character sets that I couldn't use. I tried my luck and threw out a question in a specialist news group. I got answers from all over the world. Everyone seemed to want to solve my problem! I wasn't used to this kind of support. The French are more used to working alone, without reaching out. = What do you see the future?