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Is there a place online where one can download papers that have appeared in the Asterisque if "your institution subscribes"? I am especially interested in back issues: Asterisque series published a lot of interesting papers which I would like to read, yet it seems to me the only way to access them is to take a trip to your library and pray that it has them in print. This being ridiculous in 21st century, I wonder if there is a place online with *.pdf versions of the issues...

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 Heaven forfend that something is not in PDF – Yemon Choi May 7 2012 at 19:48
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 For things "available if your library subscribes" you can consult your library... – Gerald Edgar May 7 2012 at 21:03
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 Asterisque is available from Google Books. You can download complete copies of books on Google Books using the site bookworm.evil.so. It takes about 10 days, but in the end it gets the job done. – Dmitri Pavlov May 8 2012 at 13:35
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 It is horribly organized on google books. – Sean Tilson May 8 2012 at 21:10

closed as off topic by Will Jagy, Andy Putman, Anthony Quas, Henry Cohn, Willie Wong May 8 2012 at 13:10

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I requested Mme Hélène Falavard of Numdam some years ago to digitise the old volumes of Astérisque. Here is her reply (12/12/2005):

la collection Astérisque n'est malheureusement pas prévue dans notre programme de >numérisation car la Société mathématique de France n'a pour l'instant pas donné son accord. >Peut-être cela changera-t'il un jour ......

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The issue of providing online access to Asterisque is a difficult one. The SMF offers electronic versions of its other journals, and the subscription rates for these has apparently significantly dropped. Asterisque is now the most profitable publication of the SMF and there is a lot of reluctance to join the 21st century and jeopardize this profitability. I agree with Obelisque that the best solution is to buy the old issues, but the ones that are most in demand are also out of print. All of these topics are currently being discussed (electronic versions, reprinting the back issues, ...). It is also not impossible that the Bourbaki seminars will soon be available online, maybe with a five year buffer, as the contract beween Bourbaki and the SMF gives total freedom to Bourbaki.

EDIT : of course, one reason why the standard model for journals does not quite apply to Asterisque is because it's part journal, part book series...

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"It is also not impossible that the Bourbaki seminars will soon be available online, maybe with a five year buffer" I believe they already are, with a ten year buffer (cf my answer). – quid May 8 2012 at 9:06
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One can also buy the volumes; old issues are pretty cheap (when not out of print).

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 +1 for the username w.r.t. this question. – Vaughn Climenhaga May 7 2012 at 21:13
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In general the answer is 'no'. There seems to be no offer of the SMF, which produces Asterisque, to buy electronic versions; see the SMF catlogue offering only printed versions.

If however the paper is from a Bourbaki Seminar talk (before 2002) then, yes, one can find this on http://www.numdam.org/ even 'free for all'; this should be a direct link

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 The Bourbaki seminars that are available on Numdam are the versions that the authors hand out before their talk. They're not the final versions that are published in Asterisque. – Laurent Berger May 8 2012 at 7:55
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 @Laurent Berger: Could you please back up and or recheck the content of your comment? I doubt what you say is true. I did not check each and every (recent) year, but for example the most recent available definetly seems like the Asterisque version, and not the one distributed before the seminar. (Contiously numbered over the full volume, an SMF and asterisque at the end of pages, the full table of content,...) Perhaps the logo/frontpage on the overview page was confusing? Yet if one clicks through to the years, one gets the asterisque frontpage instead (or for earlier years LNM and so on). – quid May 8 2012 at 9:10
@quid: yes you're right. In my defense, the "Astérisque" style of 10 years ago looks very much like the "brochure" style of today. – Laurent Berger May 8 2012 at 16:07
@Laurent Berger: thanks for the clarification! – quid May 9 2012 at 12:32

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