Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge: A View from Europe

This is a book that I happened across while perusing the new books area at the library. Small, at only 92 pages, this is a book that you should read. Jean-Noel Jeanneney is president of the Bibliotheque nationale de France, professor at the Institut d'etudes politique de Paris, past executive director of Radio-France and Radio-France International, and has also worked for the government of President Francois Mitterrrand as secretary of state for foreign trade and secretary of state for communications. I tell you this, as it is important to know Mr. Jeanneney's background. Especially as this book concerns Google Books. Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge takes a European look at the efforts of Google to digitize the world's books. There are two points to this, right off the bat. First, this book was translated from French. According to the author, very few books are translated into English (the major exceptions are the "classics"). Second, this is a thought provoking book from a totally different viewpoint. I think that we take Google for granted but Jeanneney does not. He talks about how Google's efforts are primarily with English speaking countries, that important works from European countries will be overlooked, and that by providing the search, you will lose important context. All very valid arguments. Many people will disagree with his position, especially since the digitization is currently underway (and because he is French), but this is an excellent book examining the thought processes of librarians. They really want to get their information out to more people, and Google Books is one such avenue. However, Jeanneney raises important questions and shows the cultural issues surrounding Google's efforts. He also asks why a private enterprise is taking on this project, when governments or libraries should be banding together to make this a reality. I really enjoyed reading this as it was facinating viewpoint. I don't think that many people would take the time to pick up this book, as very few people would actually care about Google Books or a European argument debating its merits. But I think that I am better for having read it.

Jean-Noel Jeanneney is president of France's Bibliotque Nationale and viewed Google's announcement of its intention to digitize the holdings of several major research libraries as the gauntlet in a future battle over libraries, books, and information's meaning to society. It's these ideas which comprise the essence of Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge, providing thought-provoking arguments on the nature of information-gathering and representation and the idea of a central entity controlling such information, branding it with its own cultural prejudices. College-level collections concerned with literacy, freedom and the nature of information accessibility must have this: it will fuel many a classroom debate on liberty and freedom. Diane C. Donovan California Bookwatch

This book gets five stars because of the way it so clearly expresses it's point of view. M. Jeanneney has written this book as a tirade against Google publishing books on line. He seems to have three main arguments: 1. Google is digitizing books that are in English. 2. It is being done in America. 3. It's being done by a private company. Taking the last point first, on Page 15 he says: 'A collection (of digitized books) whose permanence will be guaranteed over the long tern, as only public institutions can promise and ensure.' And on Page 62 he talks about what might happen if Google goes bankrupt. This is a good socialist view. But I find myself thinking that France capitulated to the Germans in World War II. Does he really think that the Germans would have left the collection in place if it contained the books that they had publicly burned not so long before? Does he think that the mainland Chinese would be good custodians of books written in Taiwan? Or that the Muslims who burned the Great Library of Alexandria would protect Jewish literature? The book seems to make the assumption that thee are two alternatives, turn everything over to Google, or create a Government Agency to do everythign. This is not, however the situation. There are no standards of on line books digitization. Project Gutenberg does it one way, Google does it another, as does the University of Michigan and many others. There are (as of today) almost 50,000 entries in the Books-On-Line 'Card Catalog' of on-line publications. Meanwhile, M. Jeanneney is forming committees, planning to set up a digital library, wanting to do a new search engine more suited for literature, and writing books. Meanwhile, others are skipping the committees and digitizing away.

Jean-Noël Jeanneney, the president of the National Library of France, sounds a clarion call to his fellow Europeans: organize a large-scale, Europe-wide digitization project or risk ceding the dissemination of Europe's cultural heritage to the whim of an American corporation. He argues not so much against the globalization of knowledge per se but more against what he considers Google's incomplete form of globalization, which inevitably favors Anglo-American cultural products above the rest of the world's. The alternative Jeanneney proposes relies primarily on public funding; although he does not exclude the participation of the private sector, he would like to see the European response to Google emerge from carefully crafted agreements between national libraries and other cultural institutions. Jeanneney comes across as a savvy politician who knows how to organize European-wide initiatives. He puts together a long list of all the national and European agencies he thinks should become involved in the project. The number of people from different agencies and industries and nations who need to be consulted contrasts sharply with Google's straight-forward plan to get started. I guess a lot depends on whether you think good ideas emerge more frequently from garages in Silicon Valley or meeting parlors in Brussels. Pragmatists like William James and John Dewey taught Americans to exercise healthy skepticism against affording "experts" in any field of knowledge an undue level of influence. The democratization of knowledge should generally decrease the cultural weight of the elite, who tend to privilege their social situation more than they let on. Is the danger of political elitism not as serious as that of economic plebeianism? Obviously, Jeanneney speaks to Americans across a philosophical divide about the role of the state in promoting culture. Jeanneney is at pains throughout "Google and the Myth of Universal Knowledge" to make clear that he is offering a constructive proposal. However, despite his protestations that he is not out simply to criticize Google, his argument depends on demonstrating that Google has gone about digitizing and organizing the world's information in a wrongheaded way. "...The errors (I'm speaking euphemistically) committed by Google are instructive," he writes. "Whatever it does, we should do the opposite." Jeanneney's argument against Google's approach to digitization fails in the end to convince in part because he operates with several unconvincing assumptions. His fundamental presupposition is that not all printed books can be digitized. This leads him to pose the all-important question of how properly to select those books which will be digitized. However, is it really "beyond what we can reasonably envision" to conceive of digitizing "all the books that have been printed since the time of Gutenberg"? Google has made a prodigious start toward this goal and has since been joined by Microsoft and other competitors. W