Indalecio Alvarez, EU chief proposes online culture library, Washington Post, May 4, 2005. Excerpt: 'The European Union is backing calls to put European literature online amid fears that plans by Internet giant Google to create a global virtual library could wipe out Europe's diverse cultural heritage for future generations, officials said yesterday. "We have to act," said Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, at a meeting of culture ministers and 800 artists and intellectuals in Paris. "That's why I say 'yes' to the initiative of the French president [Jacques Chirac] to launch a European digital library. I say 'yes' because Europe must not submit in the face of virulent attacks from others." Six EU members -- France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland and Spain -- on Thursday asked the European Union to launch a European digital library after 19 national libraries signed a motion urging action against the plans by the California-based Google.'
(PS: Yes to digitizing European books and putting them online. Yes to supplementing the Google book digitization project. We shouldn't forget that the Google project will include books by European authors in European languages. But even if it heavily favors Anglo-American books, as it probably will, is that a "virulent attack"? Is talk about a virulent attack the only way to raise money for such a good purpose?)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 5/04/2005 10:54:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
