In December 2004, Google caught the world by surprise and revealed Google Print, their new project to digitize 15 million books from 5 prestigious English language libraries, over a 6-year period....However, the American giant’s ambition does not end here. It is attending the Frankfurt Book Fair to convince European publishing houses to digitize and include their most recent publications in Google. Thus, when an Internet user types in the keywords of a recent work, Google will provide a 5-page sample and a link to the main libraries, bookshops and online sales portals where the book can be found. Publishing houses love the idea, since they can keep the rights on the books and get a great deal of free publicity on the web.
On the other side of the pond, the first person to raise a hue and cry was the President of the French National Library (BNF), Jean-Noël Jeanneney. He warned European cultural institutions of the damage that could be caused by Google’s hegemony in the so-called “knowledge digitization” market. At the time, the majority of the works of the Google Library were in English.
Nevertheless, the American company is striving to conquer the European market. Madrid’s Complutense University has just signed a contract with Google to digitize 300,000 volumes from its library, at a rate of up to 3000 a day, over a 6 year period....
Since 2004, the sluggish European machinery is moving to compete with Google thanks to the European Digital Library. This project will offer “a shared multilingual access point that allows online exploration of a wide cultural heritage,” that is today scattered throughout the archives of different bodies across Europe. The national libraries of several countries have started to digitize their holdings....In 2008, the European Library (TEL) portal should offer a multilingual access to a minimum of two million electronic books from the collections of the 19 European national libraries....
Nevertheless, the European Digital Library is still a work in progress. The European Commission, in an August 2006 recommendation to member states, pointed out that it was necessary to increase efforts on a national level to overcome the obstacles to the creation of the library....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/06/2006 01:51:00 PM.
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.
