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Information Technology

GOOGLE LIBRARY PROJECT IS CULTURALLY BIASED, SAYS FRENCH NATIONAL LIBRARIAN
By Aisha Labi

Chronicle of Higher Education
Volume 51, Issue 26
March 4, 2005
Page A35

http://chronicle.com/prm/weekly/v51/i26/26a03501.htm (subscribers only)

The head of the National Library of France worries that the huge digital library that Google is building in partnership with U.S. and British institutions will quickly become a dominant force in scholarship -- and that it will have too much of an American tint to it.

The Google project, which was announced in December, involves libraries at Harvard and Stanford Universities; the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor; the University of Oxford, in England; and the New York Public Library. It will eventually make the content of millions of volumes searchable online.

The move to make so much material digitally accessible was hailed by researchers and academics and received extensive news-media coverage when it was unveiled. Now, however, at least one European scholar is warning of the potential pitfalls of such a project.

In an opinion piece published in January in Le Monde, Jean-Noël Jeanneney, a prominent French historian and president of the national library, argues that the Google initiative will inevitably be biased in favor of English-language and "Anglo-Saxon" publications.

"The libraries that are going to be involved in this enterprise are certainly generously open to the civilization and works of other countries," he wrote. "It does not matter: The criteria of choice will be powerfully marked . . . by the view of Anglo-Saxons, with its specific coloring with regard to the diversity of civilizations."

Mr. Jeanneney called on European countries to build their own large-scale digital library in response, in what could become an international e-book arms race.

Ronald R. Milne, acting head of libraries at Oxford, said he was surprised to learn of Mr. Jeanneney's opposition. "That sort of accusation had never crossed my mind," he says. "You have to remember that all of these five libraries that Google has an agreement with are among the most significant in the world -- they don't just have English books."

Oxford's role in the Google project will involve digitizing up to 1.5 million out-of-copyright 19th-century books. "There will be French material among the works being digitized," said Mr. Milne, emphasizing that Oxford's libraries include "a huge amount of stock in the French language, and that will be true of Harvard, Stanford, and the others" as well. That stock is constantly augmented, he added, because Oxford spends a lot of money each year purchasing foreign-language publications.

'DELETERIOUS AND DETESTABLE'

The fact that the Google-affiliated libraries include material in French or about France is unlikely to quiet Mr. Jeanneney's unease about the cultural hegemony that he foresees.

In his Le Monde essay, he imagined what it would be like to construct a history of the French Revolution based only on British or American sources. Mr. Jeanneney, a former French secretary of state for communication, in 1989 was in charge of the lavish bicentennial celebrations of the modern French republic's defining historical event.

"It would have been deleterious and detestable for the equilibrium of the nation," he wrote in the Le Monde essay, for such a momentous historical occasion to have to depend on the depiction of "valiant British aristocrats triumphing over bloody Jacobins, the guillotine obscuring the rights of man," toward which, he said, Anglo-Saxon sources tend to be biased.

Mr. Jeanneney said action must come swiftly. If there is too much delay, he wrote, it will be too late. Once scholars start using Google's library, he said, it could become a bad habit that will be impossible to shake.

He also proposed a Europe-wide digital library project. Europe alone, he argued, is equipped to take the reins of such an endeavor and establish itself as "a center of radiating culture and political influence without parallel on the planet."

The National Library of France has already placed 80,000 works and 70,000 images in its own digital library and will soon make available online reproductions of all major French journals since the 19th century. These efforts, wrote Mr. Jeanneney, have earned the gratitude of online researchers and help to spread France's influence around the world. But, he noted, "our annual spending amounts only to a thousandth of what Google has announced."

"The battle is too unequal," he said.

Beginning this year, he suggested, the European Union should set aside a guaranteed annual budget for a project that will do no less than provide "citizens and researchers protection against the perverse effects of research for profit dissimulated behind the appearance of disinterest."

For his part, Oxford's Mr. Milne has no objection to a European e-book effort.

Mr. Jeanneney's remarks were "a bit of a storm in a teacup, to be honest," he said. "But if it provides some sort of leverage that will lead to the European Union deciding to invest in a project involving other European languages, that's all to the good."

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[Translated from Le Monde (Paris)]

WHEN GOOGLE CHALLENGES EUROPE
By Jean-Noël Jeanneney

Le Monde (Paris)
January 23, 2005

http://www.lemonde.fr/web/recherche_resumedoc/1,13-0,37-885549,0.html?message=redirection_article (for purchase)
or
http://poezibao.typepad.com/poezibao/2005/01/quand_google_df.html

For the moment, the news has hardly attracted the attention of anyone but librarians and IT workers. And yet I'll bet that it won't be long before we're feeling the cultural, and therefore political, impact, which will be huge.

Google is, as everyone knows, the leading search engine designed to guide internet users within the immensity of the Web. Chronologically one of the first, since it goes back to 1993 (seven years, a long time in this field). Number one in terms of success: today 75% of all searches for information use its interface. And number one by virtue of its capitalistic heft: traded on the New York Stock Exchange beginning in June 2004, it is finding and will continue to find abundant new resources there.

Now what's happened is that on Dec. 14, the company announced with great fanfare that it had just signed an agreement with five of the richest and most famous libraries of the English-speaking world: the New York Public Library and four university libraries, Stanford University, the University of Michigan, and Harvard University in the United States, and Oxford University in Great Britain.

An agreement to do what? Nothing less than digitize in a few years 15 million works so as to make them accessible online. Free, for all those that are in the public domain, attractive excerpts for those that are still for the time being protected by copyright. Stanford and the University of Michigan will put at Google's disposition their entire collections (8 million items for the former, 7 million for the latter); New York will give access to fragile documents that are not copyright-protected; Oxford will contribute a selection from the 19th century; and Harvard will limit itself to a test run of 40,000 documents chosen from its 15 million books.

Overall, this will amount to a dizzying 4.5 billion pages. The first reaction to this immense perspective might be jubilation pure and simple. Here, taking shape, and in the short term, is the messianic dream that was defined at the end of the last century: all the world's knowledge freely accessible the world over. Finally, an equality of opportunity re-established, to the benefit of poor countries and disadvantaged populations.

But we'd better look a little closer. And immediately great concerns emerge. Let's leave to one side the unexpressed fears of some librarians who are, without daring to say so, preoccupied with the idea of seeing their reading rooms empty out; their profession will certainly evolve little by little in how they deliver documents to citizens, and they will find many ways to explain to people the choices they have -- but the book as object has too many advantages compared to the computer screen for it not to survive a very long time. All historical experience shows that in the past none of the new modes of communication replaced those that preceded them -- they only complemented and often enhanced them.

The real challenge is elsewhere, and it is an immense one. It is this: the risk is emerging that America will exercise a crushing domination in defining the idea that coming generations will have of the world. Whatever the effect of the size of the specter announced by Google may be, completeness is out of reach, in human terms. Any undertaking of this sort therefore implies that drastic choices be made among the immensity of what is possible. The libraries that are going to lend themselves to this undertaking are certainly generously open to the civilization and works of other countries. But still: the criteria of choice will be powerfully marked (even if we ourselves contribute, without reluctance, to this wealth) by the point of view that is distinctively English-speaking, tinted with its specific colors vis-à-vis the diversity of civilizations.

I remember my experience of the bicentennial of the [French] Revolution, in 1989, when I was in charge of its commemorations. It would have been pernicious and appalling for the nation's psychic health, if the image and knowledge that it had of itself and its past, its major events, whether dark or luminous, which it was up to us to commemorate, to look solely in English or American databases for a narrative and an interpretation that was, in those places, biased in many ways: The Scarlet Pimpernel, [a 1905 novel (and 1903 play) by the Baroness Orczy, a British novelist, later the basis of a popular film (1934) celebrating the daring rescue of persecuted aristocrats --M.K.J.] overwhelming Quatre-vingt-treize ['Ninety-Three,' Victor Hugo's 1873 novel dramatizing in a somewhat more equitable fashion the antagonisms involved in the revolutionary Terror of 1793 --M.K.J.], the valiant British aristocrats triumphing over the bloody Jacobins, the guillotine hiding the rights of man and the Convention's blazing intuitions. This is an instructive example, and it puts us on our guard.

Let's not forget, too, another side of the question, concerning work in progress: in the ocean of the Internet, where everything circulates, in the realm of truth and in the realm of falsehood, the process by which products of research are validated by scientific authorities and reviews takes on, for this reason, an importance of the first order. The scientific production of the English-speaking world, already dominant in any number of areas, will as a result necessarily be overvalued, with a crushing advantage given to English compared to other languages involved in the production of knowledge, notably European ones.

It will be said that it's not a question of complete texts, since they have not, by definition, emerged from the realm of copyright -- only of excerpts, so that authors and editors are protected. But that's the point: this publicity will necessarily be discriminatory. Let us add that beneath the appearance of free access, the internet user will in fact be compensating Google as a consumer, since the company earns 99% of its revenues from advertising and since the plan only contemplates earning a return on its investment thanks to this. Ads on the margins of pages and privileged links will direct users toward purchases that will accentuate the imbalance.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, when the question of the French reply to American domination presented itself in the domain of cinema, and then broadcasting, in a way that would have kept down all original works produced among us if we had not reacted, the first reaction was one of protectionism according to a system of quotas, first in theaters and then on television. This was not illegitimate, and was partially effective. But in the case that we are now discussing, this strategy appears to be impossible, given the nature of the Web. There remains, therefore, the second strategy, which has proved itself on our various screens: that of the counter-attack, with material support for difference.

In this affair, France and its National Library have a special responsibility toward the French-speaking world. But it is well-known that no European nation is strong enough to ensure the necessary effort alone. I shall be the last, of course, to neglect what has already been accomplished: the virtual library developed by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BNF) under the name of Gallica -- which already offers 80,000 works online and 70,000 images, and which will soon make available reproductions of the great French newspapers from the nineteenth century on -- has been set up, earning the gratitude of many researchers and citizens, and it is serving our influence around the world; but it only exists by virtue of state subsidies, necessarily limited, and our own resources, which are mobilized with difficulty and with gallantry. Our annual budget only amounts to one-thousandth of that announced by Google. It's just not a fair fight.

Another policy is called for. And it can only be deployed on a European scale. A Europe resolved to be not only a market, but also an expansive center of culture and political influence unparalleled around the world.

This is therefore a moment for a solemn call. It's up to the [European] Union's officials, in its three major governing bodies, to react without delay -- for it won't belong before the seat is taken, the habits are formed, and it will be too late to make a move.

A plan stretching over several years could be drawn up and adopted this year in Brussels. A generous budget should be allocated. It's by relying on public funds that citizens and researchers -- providing for necessary expenses as taxpayers and not as consumers -- will be guaranteed protection from the perverse effects of a systemic quest for profit hidden behind the appearance of disinterestedness.

It's by bringing together state initiatives that we shall keep all our archival collections of photographs from being bought up by American companies (Corbis, Microsoft's subsidiary, has already progressed far in this area). It is by mobilizing specialized labs that we can be sure of developing a search engine as well as software tools that belong to us.

Everywhere, these days, the urgency of long-term policies of research and industry ensuring a future for Europe's distinctiveness, faced with competition on various fronts around the world whose dynamism is showing itself to be so powerful: well then! that's exactly what it's about, it's this challenge that it's up to us to confront. We can do it, so we ought to do it.

--Jean-Noël Jeanneney, former secretary of state for communication, is president of the Bibliothèque nationale de France and of the Europartenaires ['Europartners'] association.

--
Translated by Mark K. Jensen
Associate Professor of French
Department of Languages and Literatures
Pacific Lutheran University
Tacoma, WA 98447-0003
Phone: 253-535-7219
Home page: http://www.plu.edu/~jensenmk/
E-mail: jensenmk@plu.edu