[15683] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
FYI France: Google digital library vs. France?...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jack Kessler)
Tue Feb 15 20:35:42 2005
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Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2005 07:20:11 -0800
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From: Jack Kessler <kessler@WELL.COM>
To: PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU
FYI France: Google digital library vs. France?... & vs. others?
The wonderful digital library news from Google -- that all the
world's books are to be digitized -- has not been received with
unrestrained glee by everyone. I've already tried, previously
here, to suggest the worries of the rare book community: see this
FYIFrance ejournal's December 15 2004 issue.
Now comes another sceptic: from the world outside of our
"Anglo-Saxon" one... an "outside" world increasingly and
self-consciously so... He is very upset, about Google's digital
library plans, and the rest of us would do well to listen.
Jean-Noël Jeanneney is president of the Bibliothèque Nationale de
France: this is the august position of "administrateur", once
occupied by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie and Julien Cain, and other
luminaries over the centuries before them -- individuals who,
often against seemingly-insuperable odds, built and maintained
the great library which was the Bibliothèque du Roi, and then the
Bibliothèque Nationale, and now has become the BNF.
Jeanneney speaks for himself, in what he says about the Google
digital library, but he is no crusading journalist merely
grabbing at a headline. Google will be hearing from plenty of
those, as well. But Jean-Noël Jeanneney heads one of the leading
cultural institutions in the entire "non-English-speaking world".
That is a very large world, still, that non-English-speaking one.
It includes Europe, also Russia, also Africa and Latin America;
and yes also Asia, the billions of information users who are
there, too. "English-speaking" being a matter not of capacity but
of choice: for example very good English is spoken in India,
but people there might rather choose something else...
Does Jeanneney speak for them? No, he would not pretend this: he
would disclaim representing "Europe", even -- and pressed to the
point he might say he speaks not even for his own nation, or even
his BNF, but only for himself.
But the rest of us might do well to consider him representative,
I myself believe, in many of his remarks which follow below: who
else, to give us blunt and honest advice, if not the French? --
-- Jeanneney does not like the "crushing American domination"
which he senses in Google's digital library project, he says --
and would anyone else, among the great institutions and cultures
which populate the "non-English-speaking world"?
-- and he is suspicious, of what he pungently labels,
"research-for-profit, cloaked in the appearence of disinterest"
-- so in these two respects alone, then, digital library
developers everywhere might read, and carefully consider,
Jeanneney's perhaps-representative and at-least-indicative and
perhaps-very-influential remarks.
The article appears in the January 22 issue of Le Monde:
POINT DE VUE
Quand Google défie l'Europe, par Jean-Noël Jeanneney
LE MONDE | 22.01.05 | 15h49
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/imprimer_article/0%2C1-0@2-3232%2C36-395266%2C0.html
-- translations into English which follow here are my own --
"Google defies Europe", by Jean-Noël Jeanneney,
president of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France
Le Monde, January 22 2005 (URL above)
"The risk, of a crushing American domination, of the idea of the
world to be held by future generations...
"For now, the news has attracted the attention of only librarians
and computer scientists. But I would measure the significance of
this in cultural terms, and so in political terms: this is enormous..."
-- additional discussion by the French, of their BNF president's
remarks, also is easily viewed in two locations --
* Biblio-fr (French librarians. econference) archive
http://listes.cru.fr/wws/arc/biblio-fr
(search on the thread "Re: faut-il crier haro sur Google?")
* Internet Actu - Fing - INIST/CNRS
http://www.internetactu.net/?p=5810
-- Jeanneney says,
"Google is, as everyone knows, the premier search engine for
guiding Internet users through the immensity of the Web... And it
is first in terms of sheer capitalistic weight: since its listing
on the stock exchange in New York in June 2004, it has found and
it will continue to find an abundance of new financial resources.
"Therefore and thereby, on the 14th of December, this corporation
announced with great fanfare that it has concluded contracts with
five of the most celebrated and resource-rich libraries of the
Anglo-Saxon world..."
-- the corporate and capitalistic and "market-driven" aspects of
such a project, all increasingly just taken for granted in the
US, still are objects of great suspicion everywhere else, and US
Internet developers need to remember this --
"Contracts for doing what? For nothing less than the
digitization, within a few years, of 15 million works in order to
make them accessible online... for free, for those which now are
in the public domain, and in teasing extracts for the others
which still are under copyright, awaiting the passage of time..."
"They are speaking here of a total -- dizzying statistic -- of
4.5 billion pages. The initial reaction, facing such a gigantic
prospect, might be pure and simple jubilation. Look how it has
taken form, in such a short time, the messianic dream defined at
the close of the last century: all of the knowledge of the world,
accessible for free across the entire planet. Thus true equality
at last is established, thanks to science, to the greatest benefit
of the poorest nations, and of the most disadvantaged populations.
"But we have to look a little further into this. Some great
difficulties were born at the same time..."
-- the "value-free" and magically-beneficial contribution to
civilization of science, both Big Science and small science, also
is not taken for granted so often, outside of the US --
"Here we find the risk of a crushing domination, by America, of
the idea which future generations will have of the world. No
matter what the immediate effect is of the Google announcement,
the sheer exhaustivity of the undertaking puts all this beyond
our reckoning, from a humanistic point of view. Any undertaking
of this nature will require drastic choices, among the immense
variety of possibilities which it offers."
-- I add here one of my favorite quotations from Umberto Eco:
"...the issue which gives me the greatest anxiety of my
life: the conservation of books... I am terrorized by the
idea that all the books which have appeared on cellulose
paper since the 19th century are destined to disappear
because they are so fragile... When I pick up a Gallimard
from the 1950s, I have the impression of having in my
hands a lamb being burned as a sacrifice...
"We are confronted by a fundamental choice of
civilization... _But who, what authority will decide
which books to retain?_ Plato and Dante have known their
periods of disgrace, although they have been able to
transcend the centuries...
[emphasis added -- interview in _Le Nouvel Observateur_,
no.1406, 17-23 Oct 1991, an issue entitled, "No, Imaging
Has Not Killed the Civilization of the Written Word: The
Revenge of the Books", translation of the above by me in
the FYI France ejournal issue of Feb 15, 1993. JK.]
-- for Jeanneney too says,
"The libraries launching themselves into this adventure certainly
are generously open to the civilizations and works of other
countries. Nevertheless: the criteria of choice will be heavily
influenced -- even if we contribute ourselves, uncomplainingly,
to the riches of this project -- by a point of view which is
Anglo-Saxon, with its specific approach to the diversities of
human civilization.
"I remember our Bicentenary of the Revolution, in 1989, when I
was in charge of certain celebrations. It was damaging and
difficult for the well-being of my nation -- for its image and
for its own understanding of itself, of its past, of events
shining or shady -- that when we came to our commemorations we
had to seek, in English or American databases, recitals and
interpretations which were biased in so many ways: "The Scarlet
Pimpernel" crushing "Quatre-vingt-treize" -- the valiant British
aristocrats triumphing over the bloody Jacobins -- the guillotine
obscuring The Rights of Man and the brilliant contributions of
the Convention. That experience was instructive, and it puts us
on our guard.
"We should not forget, too, another aspect of this
work-in-progress: in the ocean of the Internet, where everything
can be found -- the true along with the false -- the process of
validation of the products of research, by scientific authorities
and in their journals, takes on an essential role. Anglo-Saxon
science, which already is dominant in a certain number of
domains, will become over-valued, inevitably -- with a crushing
advantage to English, over the languages of other cultures,
including those of other European cultures.
"It will be said that we speak here not of complete works,
because those by definition are not yet in the public domain, but
only of extracts, for the protection of authors and publishers.
But in fairness this publicity alone will be discriminatory, and
necessarily. Under the appearance of gratuity the Internet user
in fact will repay Google, qua consumer, as that corporation
lives 99% off of publicity, and the project which it has
announced surely envisions a return-on-investment. And little ads
in the page margins and preferred links will lead to sales,
accentuating the imbalance."
-- and Jeanneney is careful to offer not just defensiveness but
also a challenge, a competitive one --
"Ever since the question first was posed, following the second
world war -- initially in film and then generally in the mass
communications industries -- the issue of the French response to
American domination, as a matter of principle if not in outright
reaction, has weighed upon all of our originality here. A first
response was protectionism, via a quota system, in theaters and
then on the television. This was a legitimate reply, and it was
partially effective. But in the present case such a strategy
would be impossible, given the nature of the Web. There is a
second approach, though, one which already has proven itself on
several Websites: that of a counter-attack, one with an emphasis
on cultural differences.
"In this matter France and her Bibliothèque Nationale have a
special responsibility toward the francophone world. But no
European nation is, we know, strong enough to undertake such an
effort. I certainly would be the last to ignore the efforts thus
far accomplished: the digital library developed by the
Bibliothèque nationale de France under the name of Gallica --
which already offers 80,000 works and 70,000 images online, and
soon will offer the fulltexts of the great French journals of the
19th century -- now is accessible, to the plaudits of numerous
researchers and citizens, and it spreads our influence throughout
the world. But it exists only through the subsidies of the French
government, which are not unlimited, and through our own BNF
resources, which are assembled valiantly but with difficulty. Our
annual expense is not even a thousandth of the vast sum announced
now by Google. The combat is unequal by far.
"Another approach is needed. And it can only be deployed on a
pan-European scale: a Europe determined to be not just a market,
but a shining center of culture and political influence without
peer around the planet.
"So the time has come for a solemn appeal. It calls upon the
leaders of the Union, in its three leading institutions, to
respond without delay -- for, very quickly, the position will be
taken, the habits will be formed, it will be to late to nudge
them aside later on.
"A multi-year plan must be defined and adopted this year at
Brussels. A generous budget must be provided. It is in providing
these public funds that we will give to our citizens and our
researchers -- providing them as necessary expenses and not as
consumer products -- a protection against the perverse effects of
research-for-profit, cloaked in the appearence of disinterest.
"It is only by relying on national government initiatives that we
will prevent all of our archival photographic collections from
falling into the hands of American corporations (Corbis, a
subsidiary of Microsoft, already has taken things far in that
direction). It is only by mobilizing specialized laboratories
that we will develop search engines as well as software which are
our own.
"Everywhere one calls upon, nowadays, the urgency of long-term
research and industrial development policies which will assure,
in the face of strong global competition trends, a pathway for
the originality which Europe can contribute: well, here it is,
exactly -- this is the challenge which we must confront. We can
do it, we must do it.
"* Jean-Noël Jeanneney, former secretary of state for
communications, is the President of the Bibliothèque Nationale de
France and of the association Europartenaires."
--oOo--
Note:
Am I personally in favor of any of this, either of what Google is
proposing or of what Jeanneney is calling for here to combat it?
I do not see the two as opposed, myself -- I am very much in
favor of both, in fact. It always has been as Jeanneney himself
suggests, I believe: elsewhere in the above piece he observes,
"All the experience of history shows that in the past no new mode
of communication ever has been simply substituted for that which
preceded it -- instead it complements the other, often adding
value to both."
-- certainly Henri-Jean Martin suggests this, too, and Elizabeth
Eisenstein confirms it, regarding "transitions in media". People
still write, in spite of centuries of printing. And people still
speak, and paint, and decorate their buildings, in spite of
centuries of writing, so Hugo's "ceci tuera cela" was an
over-statement. And no decades in history ever have witnessed
such paper production and consumption, as those now which have
followed the arrival, proclaimed a quarter century ago, of "the
paperless library".
And this will continue, it appears to me. There is room for both,
and more. The world still contains much illiteracy: illiteracy
regarding the written and printed word, and also illiteracy
regarding the visual world, and sound, and taste, and multi-media
representations of all of these and more. Many of us, on the
globe, still cannot "read and write", and all too few of us can
really "see" or "hear".
From Geoffroy Tory to Roland Barthe to Edward Tufte, we have been
taught how little really most of us know of the visual and many
other worlds of "texts". Most of us still are discovering the
worlds of Bach, and of Rock and Rap. And all too few of us really
understand "color", whether we are adept at manipulating our
cellphones or not. And virtual reality developers only now are
getting started on the richness & depth & complexities of
multi-media representation.
And we need them all: because different people communicate in
different ways, on different occasions: a globalizing world so
devoted to "diversity", as the present one is, can ill afford to
block off one particular communication channel in favor of any other.
Should the approach be "combat", rather than "cooperation"? Well,
cooperation does work better, sometimes. But an old definition of
"trade" is "warfare by peaceful means". So Jeanneney's
call-to-arms, in the above, to me gains much in strategy and
tactics to balance its occasional over-simplifications...
No there is not an "anglo-saxon world", as an example of the
latter: Oxford and London friends long have made clear to me just
how separate we in the US and UK are -- and when they haven't,
other friends in Liverpool and Glasgow have -- and just when all
of that begins to look alike, at least comparing it to places
elsewhere on the planet, recent social trends in San Jose
California and in London's Brixton remind me of just how
changeable the most settled circumstances may quickly become.
I'll take Jeanneney or anyone else French on tours of elementary
schools in California or in Greater London, nowadays, and
challenge them to find anything therein easily categorized as
being simply "anglo-saxon".
But Jeanneney knows this, I am sure. Modern France is the same.
He is making merely a strategic and tactical point, in asserting
his "us vs. them" of "Europe vs. 'the anglo-saxons'". It is a
valid question, I believe, how one marshals one's own troops; but
for some causes whatever it takes will do, and I wouldn't
question his judgment on that.
My own position, then, is merely strategic and tactical as well.
Qua American I ought to and in fact do welcome the competition:
the "business of America" being "business"... If France or Europe
or anyone else comes up with strong competition, for Google's new
digital library model, I welcome that: it will strengthen the
Google effort, and add value to the efforts of all. If Europe
does come up with a market entry, I might even buy some more
Google shares... that's "market capitalism"...
Qua strategist and tactician myself, though, I am very concerned
that my own team might become short-sighted, too: might not
realize what the others in the market -- what the customers, in
fact, who always must be heard -- are thinking, and doing. A
mutual misunderstanding problem... India and China, for instance,
both might raise points similar to Jeanneney's "Scarlet
Pimpernel" objections, above; or Vietnam and the Philippines
might do so -- and very justifiably in my own view -- to
American-dominated digital library efforts.
So it is at least in that spirit that I translate and publicize
Jeanneney's remarks here: US and other digital library developers
all need to see, and consider, the whole picture -- and it has
been my own experience, since the very invention of the public
Internet, and certainly since the beginnings of "The Web" and
"digital libraries", that digital development tends to focus on
its own navel, on itself, and too often in documents which have
been written only in English.
There is a bigger world out there. Here a leading exponent of
that "non-English-speaking world" is presenting his views. We
would do well to listen very carefully. He is critical, and he
makes points which appeal far beyond our pocketbooks, to opinions
and ideals of equality and diversity and fairness which we hold
as dear as he does. There also is simply the impoverishment of
our own effort, which would result from excluding him and the
others. And there are more of him than there are of us; and,
finally, they are at the very least "the customers".
Together, albeit in competition, we and the Europeans and many
others _all_ might fashion a better "information" world, using
different digital library techniques which -- like the oral &
written & printed "word" historically -- do not replace but in
fact will complement one another.
So, on the US listening once again here to the French, perhaps
ironically it is as Kent warned Lear, about blunt and honest
views being more useful than flattery:
"thy youngest daughter does not love thee least... see
better, Lear."
--oOo--
FYI France (sm)(tm) e-journal ISSN 1071-5916
*
| FYI France (sm)(tm) is a monthly electronic
| journal published since 1992 as a small-scale,
| personal experiment, in the creation of large-
| scale "information overload", by Jack Kessler.
/ \ Any material written by me which appears in
----- FYI France may be copied and used by anyone for
// \\ any good purpose, so long as, a) they give me
--------- credit and show my email address, and, b) it
// \\ isn't going to make them money: if it is going
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Use of material written by others requires their permission.
FYI France archives may be found at http://infolib.berkeley.edu
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(BIBLIO-FR archive), or http://listserv.uh.edu/archives/pacs-l.html
(PACS-L archive) or http://www.fyifrance.com . Suggestions,
reactions, criticisms, praise, and poison-pen letters all will be
gratefully received at kessler@well.sf.ca.us .
Copyright 1992- , by Jack Kessler,
all rights reserved except as indicated above.
--hjlm--
