Mark Chillingworth, Chirac to demand EU response to Google, Information World Review, April 15, 2005. The last we heard, Jacques Chirac was asking Germany, Spain, and Russia to join France in digitizing European books to neutralize the supposed edge that the Google library project would give to Anglo-American literature. Now Chirac is asking the whole EU. Excerpt: 'Jacques Chirac, the French President, is to propose a European-wide digitisation of European libraries to rival Google Print later this year. In a statement from the Elysee Palace, Chirac announced that the French culture minister, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, and the president of the National Library of France, Jean-Noel Jeanneney, will study the viability of such a plan....Chirac described equivalent access to the collections of European national libraries as "fundamental for the dissemination of knowledge"....President Chirac is expected to take the results of the De Vabres and Jeanneney study to the next EU heads of state meeting in June, where he will propose a co-ordinated alternative digitisation effort backed by EU money.'
(PS: I don't care if the motive is cooperation or competition. The more digitized books, especially free online digitized books, the merrier.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 4/16/2005 08:28:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
