Jean-Noel Jeanneney

Jeanneney is critical of Google the company and their Book Search enterprise in particular. He feels that to give a company so much power over the products of culture is short-sighted and dangerous. It neglects other cultures in the focus on American books, and it does not guarantee organization or clarity. He believes that libraries with government support and funding are the most appropriate venues for digitization projects, as they could more readily ensure longevity and cooperation; libraries' methods would have much more transparency than Google allows. Libraries in all nations should be involved in this endeavor for the betterment of humankind, and he calls Europe to the fore to become a leader in ensuring their cultures and languages in the digital realm.… (more)

Jean-Noel Jeanneney, esteemed president of the Bibliotheque nationale de France, started an international dialogue to answer questions about Google and its plans to digitize information from all corners of the globe in order to make it universally accessible; this slim volume is the result of that beginning and that dialogue. Jeanneney, like Michael Gorman, the past president of ALA, worries aloud about the destruction of the whole: “How a search engine selects, organizes and presents information can destroy or invisibly distort the context.” Because France, along with other countries, wants to retain its culture in a global environment, it began its own massive movement toward digitization and presenting worldwide Internet access to French works of all kinds – from sound to image to written word – because cutural diversity, Jeanneney writes, is as important as biodiversity in nature. “Market forces alone cannot guarantee the preservation and promotion of cultural diversity, which is the key to sustainable human development.” While he sees that the imbalance of Google is not deliberate, protecting languages, not French alone, is an imperative; and market economics cannot be trusted to that end. “Many Europeans ... refuse to accept that a cultural work might be considered and treated as just another piece of merchandise.” Jeanneney, it should be noted, received dozens of requests for interviews from all forms of mass media – including American media. This book should be read by all librarians and library school students who doubt that an American interest can capture what it intends to with such a massive digitization project such as “Google Book Search.” Says Jeanneney: “the social and cultural function of librarians will be increasingly important and prestigious in the future; they will be even more useful to the public, and their profession will become more satisfying.” -- Jeanie Straub… (more)