Google And The Myth Of Universal Knowledge: A View From Europe

The recent announcement that Google will digitize the holdings of several major libraries sent shock waves through the book industry and academe. Google presented this digital repository as a first step towards a longdreamedof universal library, but skeptics were quick to raise a number of concerns about the potential for copyright infringement and unanticipated effects on the business of research and publishing.JeanNol Jeanneney, president of Frances Bibliothque Nationale, here takes aim at what he sees as a far more troubling aspect of Googles Library Project: its potential to misrepresentand even damagethe worlds cultural heritage. In this impassioned work, Jeanneney argues that Googles unsystematic digitization of books from a few partner libraries and its reliance on works written mostly in English constitute acts of selection that can only extend the dominance of American culture abroad. This danger is made evident by a Google book search the author discusses hereone run on Hugo, Cervantes, Dante, and Goethe that resulted in just one nonEnglish edition, and a German translation of Hugo at that. An archive that can so easily slight the masters of European literatureand whose development is driven by commercial interestscannot provide the foundation for a universal library.As a leading librarian, Jeanneney remains enthusiastic about the archival potential of the Web. But he argues that the shortterm thinking characterized by Googles digital repository must be countered by longterm planning on the part of cultural and governmental institutions worldwidea serious effort to create a truly comprehensive library, one based on the politics of inclusion and multiculturalism.