European project will be an alternative to Google's online library

European Libraries Fight Google-ization
The European project will be an alternative to Google's online library

In a stand against a deal struck by five of the world's top libraries and
Google to digitize millions of books, 19 European libraries have agreed to
back a similar European project to safeguard literature.

Nineteen European national libraries have joined forces against a planned
communications revolution by Internet search giant Google to create a
global virtual library, organizers said Wednesday. The 19 libraries are
backing instead a multi-million euro counter-offensive by European nations
to put European literature online.

"The leaders of the undersigned national libraries wish to support the
initiative of Europe's leaders aimed at a large and organized digitization
of the works belonging to our continent's heritage," a statement said.
"Such a move needs a tight coordination of national ambitions at EU level
to decide on the selection of works," it added.

The statement was signed by national libraries in Austria, Belgium, the
Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece,
Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia,
Slovakia, Spain and Sweden.

The British National Library
The British National Library has given its implicit support to the move,
without signing the motion, while Cyprus and Malta have agreed verbally to
the text. Portugal is also set to approve it.

US libraries' deal with Google

The move, organized by France's national library, comes after Michigan
University and four other top libraries -- Harvard, Stanford, New York
Public Library and the Bodleian in Oxford -- announced in December a deal
with Google to digitize millions of their books and make them freely
available online.

Michigan and Stanford are planning to digitize their entire library
collections -- totaling some 15 million books -- while the Bodleian is
offering around one million books published before 1900.

The Harvard and New York Public Library contributions are smaller, but the
entire project is still expected to take up to 10 years, with cost
estimates ranging from $150 million to $200 million (116 million euros -
154 million euros).

French fears of online cultural imperialism

Google's plans have rattled the cultural establishment in Paris, raising
fears that French language and ideas could be just sidelined on the
worldwide web, already dominated by English.

French President Jacques Chirac has asked Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu
de Vabres and France's National Library president Jean-Noel Jeanneney to
study how collections in libraries in France and Europe could be put more
widely and more rapidly on the Internet. President Chirac is due to address
the question during his opening address to a meeting of EU culture
ministers in Paris on Monday and Tuesday.

Future perception of the world at risk, say French

Jeanneney has acknowledged that such a project, comprising some 4.5 billion
pages of text, would help researchers and give poor nations access to
global learning.

But he added: "The real issue is elsewhere. And it is immense. It is
confirmation of the risk of a crushing American domination in the
definition of how future generations conceive the world."

Some call it Victor Hugo vs. Harry Potter; it's almost certainly David vs.
Goliath. The strong man is the Internet search engine Google. The underdog:
a top French librarian who doesn't want Anglo-American domination. (April
9, 2005)