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January 24, 2007

Google Library: A View from Europe

Since my theme for the day seems to be looking at Google and the way we, as librarians, do business, I thought I would share this article by Jean-Noël Jeanneney that appears in December, 2006 issue of D-Lib Magazine.

D-Lib Magazine
December 2006
Volume 12 Number 12

ISSN 1082-9873
Jean-Noël Jeanneney’s Critique of Google: Private Sector Book Digitization and Digital Library Policy
David Bearman
Archives & Museum Informatics

(This Opinion piece presents the opinions of the author. It does not necessarily reflect the views of D-Lib Magazine or its publisher, the Corporation for National Research Initiatives.)

Abstract
In October the University of Chicago Press published Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge: A View from Europe, by Jean-Noël Jeanneney, President of the Bibliothèque nationale de France [1]. English speaking readers should take what Jeanneney has to say seriously (as well as the critique offered in the Foreword by Ian Wilson, Librarian and Archivist of Canada), both because it resonates with European cultural politics – and has succeeded to a significant extent in motivating a movement to digitize European print heritage – and because much of his case against Google Book Search serving as a building block of the digital library of the future is, in fact, compelling [2].

Barely a month after the Google announcement on December 14, 2004, that it would digitize the “world’s knowledge” (15 million books from five major research libraries in the US and UK), Jean-Noel Jeanneney responded with “When Google Challenges Europe” on the editorial pages of Le Monde [3]. His ‘cri du coeur’ was expanded into this book, published as Quand Google défie l’Europe: Plaidoyer pour un sursaut, in April 2005, not the least because by mid-March President Chirac had endorsed his views and called for France to take European leadership in book digitization. As is evident from the chronology of policy, funding and digitization initiatives in the updated Introduction to this English language edition, Jeanneney struck a cord not just in France or Europe, but worldwide, and his “call to arms” has engendered a dramatic increase in international collaboration in the digitization of books by governments, to counter what he identifies as the risks posed by Google. …More

posted by Anna at 11:24 am |

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