LOCOM-FRANCE - © 1999 Sylvain Chardon† & 2012 Jacques Louvel

Synopsis

Presentation

Foreword concerning the english version of this site

This site has been initially released only in a french version.
I have then decided to translate the site in english. However, with more than 200 pages, it appeared very difficult for me to translate manually all the pages of the site, and I found it difficult to translate only part of the site as it would mean to shift constantly from one language to the other. I have therefore limited the translation of Locom to the current "presentation" page, which is designed to help your visit of the french version of the site even though you do not speak french fluently.

For the other pages of the site, you can always try to use a tool for automatic translation such as Google http://translate.google.com/translate_t.

However, the use of such a tool has several backdraws:

the translation is sometimes approximative
when a departement or a town's name contains a word present in the dictionnary (for example the town of "Le Blanc"), it will be automatically translated ("The White"), which might impair your search
technically speaking, Locom site is design with scripts that might become unfunctionnal upon automatic translation, limiting therefore the possibility of browsing the site.

For all these reasons, I strongly advise you to browse and visit the site as much as possible in its original french version. The presentation in english you will find below is designed to help you find your way in the french version of the site.
In the presentation below, each function of Locom is described in english. For each link, I have made a short overview of the content of the page, for which I have tried to find a title in english, but I have always mentionned the original french title of the link in green. For example, Search by department (Accès aux départements) means that to search a town according to its departement (Search by department), you will have to follow the link Accès aux départements.
That way, this presentation below will, I hope, help you to use Locom in its original version even though you are not a fluent french speaker.

Why did I create this site ?

This site is meant for genealogists and has been designed to locate quickly any french town on a map of the department it belongs to.
The aim is not to mention roads, rivers, or topography but to show the geographical location of a town in its department. Among other things, this allows to evaluate the distances between towns.
While consulting the sitesCousinsGenWeb, I often see that another genealogists studies the same surnames than I do but in a different town which is unkown to me, and I wonder where it is in the department. That is what gave me the idea to design Locom-France.
Towns and parishes that do not longer exist are not on my maps, but whenever I have seen (thanks to you !) any website with more informations, I have mentionned them.
For these "disappeared" towns and parishes, don't forget to check the various sites CousinsGenWeb sites and their pages "Notes sur les communes".

Contents

You have two main choices :

Search by department (Accès aux départements) : Choosing a departement from a drop-down list or through a map of France, you get to the list of all the current towns of this departement. Select one of them and its location will appear on the map of the departement.
Nota : The list of towns from each department comes from the census from 1999 but demographic datas date from 1990 (taken from INSEE 1990-1999)

Afterwards, you can also switch to another page which gives you the name of the towns when passing the mouse over the maps (link "Overflight") (Survol).
Warning : Using the "Overflight" link, some pages might take long to load on your screen, depending on the number of towns in the department.
Exemple :

100 ko for Pas-de-Calais (F62) which has the highest number of towns(894)
30 ko pour le Morbihan (F56) (261 towns)

Search by town (Accès aux communes) : The second possibility is the use of another drop-down list containing all the names of the 36000 towns of France, cut down in alphabetical order in 84 sub-lists.

Note: The prepositions Le, La, Les, etc.. at the beginning of towns names are not taken into account for the alphabetical sorting. You will therefore find towns like Le Blanc at "Blanc (Le)" (from Biaches to Blyes), or Les Alleuds at "Alleuds (Les)" (from Aast to Alzonne). On the contrary, town names beginning with Saint, Sainte are all sorted within the "S" lists.

Example:

from Aast to Alzonne
de Amage à Apt
de Arabaux à Atur
...
de Ibarrolle à Izotges
de Jablines à Juziers
...

Note : List of towns from the 1990 census.
(source INSEE 1990)

Selecting a town from the drop-down list will indicate on a map of France to which department it belongs. Clicking on the image displayed here on the right, you will locate the town on the map of the concerned department...
... where the position of the town is displayed using this image.

Other data are displayed

name of the selected town
Its INSEE code (each town has its unique INSEE code)
Name and number of the department it belongs to
Population in the INSEE census from 1990 (1)
(1) Population without double counts (see the Insee site for more details)
Population Density (number inhabitants per km²
Town's approximative Surface (calculated from the 2 previous data
These three statistics are given to you as P / D / S
The link Carte Cassini (Carte Cassini) allows you to vizualize the selected town on a map from the XVIIIth century (Carte de Cassini). This evolution of the site has begun on December 12th, 2002 and will be generalized gradually to all the departments.
On the 20-06-2003 : All the towns have now a link to open a Cassini map.
Since 2012 : Cassini maps are displayed through the Geoportail site.
Le 24-04-2014 : After a interruption due to a change in the Geoportail site, the display of Cassini maps is restored.
Since October 23, 2002, a link Towards GenCom site (vers site Gencom) points towards the site developped by Jean-Pierre Bourderon and enables you to access to general data on the selected town (in a new window). Depending on the town, available information may vary but will only augment in size and accuracy upon new contributions of volunteers. Some examples of infos available on GenCom : Opening time of the city hall, changes in name of the city, disappeared cities merged to this town, web site on the town,...

The star (*) following the name of a town means that comments over this particular town are mentionned in the link "Notes on the department" (Notes sur le département).

For each department, you will find the following links:

"Notes on the department" (Notes sur le département) indicates the total number of inhabitants in the department for censuses from 1968 to 1999.
This page can also contain informations over modifications (creation, merging, renaming...) of towns in that department between 1990 and 1999, along with links to other web sites mentionning older modifications.
"Overflight" (Survol) enables you to identify the towns when passing over the map with the mouse.
"List of departments" (Liste des départements) enables you to change for a new department.
Clicking on the map on the name of a neighbourhing departement gives you a direct access to that department.
"Synopsis" (Sommaire) to get back to Locom's home page

The other items of the synopsis:

	Selected links (Carnet d'adresses) gives you a list of sites (mostly in french) about French towns and departments. Links are sorted on a thematic basis (INSEE codes, Zip codes, maps, ...)
	History of the site (Historique du site) sums up the evolution of Locom since its creation in 2000. In this item, you will find a month-to-month history of the departments created, minor or major updates like the "complete reorganization of the site" in may 2000, or "Searching for town limits... for towns with no limits" in july 2000. A link *"Visits of the month"* was informing you() about the statistics of visits of the site, department by department. () Because of problems with the counters, this link is discontinued since october 2000.**
	Your visit (Vos consultations) gathers several tips ans explanations on how to make a link to Locom or where Locom is referred to in sites of the FranceGenWeb association. The link "Your reactions on Locom" (Vos réactions sur Locom) compiles the messages which have been sent to me about Locom. I find there at a glance your criticisms, your encouragements, your reactions, your suggestions... The link"Thanks" (Remerciements) is dedicated to those who have helped or supported me.
	Downloads (Téléchargement) to view (and/or download), maps (Cassini maps), charts (administrative regional or departmental divisions) and administrative data on the towns (zip codes, INSEE codes, ...)
	Possible evolutions (Evolutions à l'étude) sums up functionnalities that might be integrated...some day.
	The page Presentation (Présentation) which describes the site and its functionnalities, which you are reading right now.