From Ruth Fischer www.quantaa.com

May 10, 2005
CALIFORNIA
European Leaders Propose Digital Library to Counter Google Version
The firm's plan to create a collection of world literature triggers
fears of Anglo-American cultural dominance.

From Associated Press


The world according to Google?

Europeans have long bemoaned the influence of Hollywood movies on
their culture. Now plans by Mountain View, Calif.-based Google Inc.
to create a massive digital library have triggered such strong fears
in Europe about Anglo-American cultural dominance that one critic is
warning of a "unilateral command of the thought of the world."

For Europeans, the fear is that the continent's contribution to the
pillars of recorded knowledge will be crushed by a profit-oriented
company, and may end up presenting a U.S.-centric version of the
world's literary legacy.

Google's ambitions are grand, if a bit more modest than the hostile
corporate takeover of the tiller of world literature that many
critics seem to be imagining.

The project, announced in December, involves scanning millions of
books at the libraries of four universities — Oxford, Harvard,
Stanford and the University of Michigan — as well as the New York
Public Library and putting them online. It will take years to
complete.

So great is the concern that six European leaders have jointly
proposed creating a "European digital library" to counter the
project by Google Print, as the new venture is known. Other
countries are expected to come on board.

Failing to digitalize, declared the heads of state in France,
Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland and Hungary in an appeal to the
European Union, is to risk that "this heritage could, tomorrow, not
fill its just place in the future geography of knowledge."

Jean-Noel Jeanneney, who as president of the French National Library
oversees a collection of 13 million books, presented a vision of
Google potentially hijacking "the thought of the world" in a book he
published last week titled "When Google Challenges Europe."

"I think that this could lead to an imbalance to the benefit of a
mainly Anglo-Saxon view of the world," Jeanneney said. "I think this
is a danger."

He noted that French cinema thrives only because the government took
steps to ensure its survival against an American onslaught.

Peering into the future, the critics see an age where if you can't
be found on Google, you're nobody. That may be OK for the likes of
Dante and Shakespeare, but many fear lesser known authors would
suffer.

"There is increasing concern, I think, that something not registered
on the Net will not be seen as existing," Hungarian Culture Minister
Andras Bozoki said.

A European project would provide a voice for smaller countries and
their literature, he added.

Although giants of Hungarian literature, for instance, are most
certainly on the shelves of the libraries on Google's digitization
list, they might not make the cut in the selection process — or
perhaps only do so in translation. Or take, for example, the 19th
century writer Cyprian Norwid, a favorite of the late Pope John Paul
II. Will Google provide his poetry in the original Polish?

Many works that the French consider sources of cultural inspiration
for Europe and beyond could also miss the cut in a market-oriented
selection system, Jeanneney said.

Jeanneney, a historian, envisions a European search engine "at the
service of culture" rather than a simple "juxtaposition" of books.

However, he also raised the possibility of bringing Google into the
European project, and Google Print representatives met last week in
Paris with French National Library officials.

"We asked an enormous number of questions," said Agnes Sall, the
library's director general. "All of this is part of a very rich
debate."

Google said it was eager to work with libraries all over the world
so that even more books could be included in its search engine
index.

"We are supportive of all digitization efforts because we believe
everyone benefits when more information is available online," said
Susan Wojcicki, the company's director of product development.

U.S. libraries already are contributing a significant amount of
material written in foreign languages, Wojcicki added.

So far, as many as 23 national libraries in the European Union's 25
member states have said they want a European search engine. However,
all the governments have not yet signed on — a crucial step
toward
obtaining the enormous funding that would be borne by the EU.

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