TUESDAY, MARCH 22, 2005
Chirac plans Net offensive on US culture
AFP
PARIS: French President Jacques Chirac has vowed to launch a new 'counter-offensive' against American cultural domination, enlisting the support of the British, German and Spanish governments in a multi-million euro bid to put the whole of European literature on-line.
Chirac was reacting to news that the US search-engine provider Google is to offer access to some 15 million books and documents currently housed in five of the most prestigious libraries in the English-speaking world.
The realisation that the 'Anglo-Saxons' were on the verge of a major breakthrough towards the dream of a universal library seriously rattled the cultural establishment in Paris, raising again the fear that French language and ideas will one day be reduced to a quaint regional peculiarity. So on Wednesday, Chirac met culture minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres and National Library president Jean-Noel Jeanneney and asked them "to analyse the conditions under which the collections of the great libraries in France and Europe could be put more widely on the Internet."
"In the weeks to come, the president will launch initiatives in the direction of his European partners in order to propose ways of coordinating efforts in this field," a statement said.
"A vast movement of digitalisation of knowledge is under way across the world. With the wealth of their exceptional cultural heritage, France and Europe must play a decisive part. It is a challenge for the spread of knowledge and the development of cultural diversity."
It was Jeanneney who alerted Chirac to the new challenge. In an article in the Le Monde, France's chief librarian conceded that the Google-Print project, with its 4.5 billion pages of text, will be a boon to researchers.
But he went on: "The real issue is elsewhere. And it is immense. It is the confirmation of the risk of a crushing American domination in the definition of how future generations conceive the world."
"The libraries that are taking part in this enterprise are of course themselves generously open to the civilisations and works of other countries... but still, their criteria for selection will be profoundly marked by the Anglo-Saxon outlook," he said.
Jeanneney drew as an example the 1989 celebrations to mark the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution. It would have been 'deleterious and detestable' for the image of France if the only texts popularly consulted around the world for an interpretation of the revolution were English-language ones, he said.
"It would have meant The Scarlet Pimpernel triumphing over Ninety-three (Victor Hugo's eulogistic account of the revolution); valiant British aristocrats triumphant over bloody Jacobins; the guillotine concealing the rights of man and the shining ideas of the Convention," he said.
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