France National Library Attacks Google Book Effort

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.'"

Comments

Maybe he should start with Wikipedia

[John3]

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.

Read the Source, Luke

[abb3w]

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!!!