Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

France National Library Attacks Google Book Effort

Posted by Zonk on from the french-say-no-to-american-bits dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The National Library of France is not happy with Google's effort to scan and integrate millions of books into its Web search. Jean-Noel Jeanneney, President of the library, wrote in an editorial that he is concerned Google's initiative to digitalize volumes at five leading libraries will reflect a unipolar worldview dominated by the English language and American culture. Jeanneney is pushing for European libraries to follow in Google's footsteps. Google said it was surprised by Jeanneney's remarks and noted, 'This is a first step for us; we can't do everything at once.'"

4 of 899 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Of course it "invokes French ire" by FidelCatsro · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If google were to chronical only the american works and american literature , then label it as a world history or a total world collection of some sort, then i would agree he had a point .However google to my knowlidge are not doing this , they are just creating an international online library.We are all free to do this if we want (with non copyright material,well non copyright in our respective nations).
    It is the duty of the national librarys to preserve the literary history of the country , now what is stopping Them from doing this , im sure plenty of companys would be willing to sponsor such an initiative , not to mention state funding.
    If you want the history of your land and the history of its views of the world preserved for the world to enjoy , then stop moaning and start scanning

    --
    The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
  2. Maybe he should start with Wikipedia by John3 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Wikipedia has over 450,000 English entries, over 200,000 German articles, and over 100,000 Japanese articles. France is in fourth with over 83,000 articles.

    --
    "We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
  3. Read the Source, Luke by abb3w · · Score: 4, Interesting
    SO whats stopping him from volunteering and starting to scan/digitize other works?

    Money-- and he has been. From an automatic translation (ironically via...) of the editorial:

    I will be, of course, the last to neglect the accomplished efforts: the virtual library developed by the national Library of France (BNF) under the name of Gallica - which proposes already 80 000 works on line and 70 000 images, and which will offer soon the reproduction of large French newspapers since the XIX E century - is installed with the gratitude of many researchers and citizens, and it serves our influence around the world; but it saw only State grants, inevitably limited, and our own resources, with difficulty and valiantly mobilized. Our annual expenditure amounts only to one thousandths of that announced by Google.
    Or, in other words: "Hey, morons! I've been working on this, but I can't match their efforts when I'm being outspent by this much!!!

    --
    //Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
  4. Re:why does france hate google? by MikeCapone · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What's so bad about creating a word in your language?

    The English language is full of englicized foreign word.

    I really don't get why the "email -> courriel" ("email" stands for "electronic mail" and "courriel" stands for "courrier electronique" -- same logic) example gets thrown around as if it was evidence of something really terrible.

    --
    Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!