Culture: The European Digital Library

Prompted by an initiative from France, the European Union recently announced its plan to make all of the knowledge in Europe’s libraries available to Internet users. The implementation of the European Digital Library, based on the digitisation process already begun in many European libraries, heralds a revolution in the world of print. Six countries - Germany, Italy, Spain, Hungary, Poland and France - are involved in this cultural, technical and financial collaboration.

A universal virtual library that will make culture available online to all Internet users: one of the oldest humanist dreams is about to come true. Yet this ancient dream also constitutes an enormous challenge.

Following France’s lead, six European countries (Germany, Italy, Spain, Hungary, Poland and France) have asked the European Union to launch a European Digital Library in order to coordinate the initiatives of national libraries. “More than ever, France and Europe need to work hand in hand to preserve their cultural diversity and build, via concrete projects, a Europe of culture”, announced Jacques Chirac, France’s President. The six leaders European expressed the need to defend a heritage “unequalled in richness and diversity that expresses the universalism of a continent which, throughout its history, has been in dialogue with the rest of the world”. On 3 May 2005, at the “Meeting for a Cultural Europe” in Paris, European Council President Jean-Claude Juncker voiced a heartfelt “yes” in favour of the creation of an online European library.

This project comes on the heels of a joint motion, signed by 19 national European libraries, calling for an EU initiative to counter the colossal book digitisation programme announced at the end of 2004 by Google, the world’s most powerful search engine. On 14 December 2004, Google revealed its plan to digitise and freely make available some 15 million books (or 4,5 billion pages) on the Internet, in collaboration with five of the English-speaking world’s most prestigious libraries. The project’s price tag is an estimated 150 to 200 million dollars. On the surface, the idea is good. Yet several questions arise: should public property be entrusted to a private company that would then have a monopoly on global information? And more importantly, should culture be subjected to market laws? The emphatic response came from Jean-Noël Jeanneney, Director of the French National Library (BNF). In an article carried in French daily Le Monde, he stated that, though not hostile to Google’s project, he didn’t want “everything reflected in an American mirror”, and that was important to provide “another point of view, one that reflects European sensibilities”. This event coincided with the tenth anniversary of the BNF, the national library founded in 1995 by François Mitterrand, then President of France.

The project’s cultural stakes are extremely high, but its execution is conditioned by the technical requirements of digitisation and its many unknown variables, which will ultimately determine the project’s financial costs. An interministerial steering committee was set up in July 2005 to report on the project’s methods of realisation. Chaired by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication, this committee comprises representatives from the French Ministries of Industry, European Affaires, Higher Education, and Research, as well as six highly qualified outside personalities. “The committee’s objective is to propose a viable and diversified economic model, one that does not rest solely on French and European public funds, but explores all potential partnerships between the public and private sectors. This is an economic and industrial venture as well as a cultural and scientific project”, observed Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, French Minister of Culture and Communication. A white paper is underway.

Making works available on digital networks is a key challenge and one of the main priorities of the French Ministry of Culture and Communication. “Each of the Ministry’s major areas of intervention - national heritage, architecture, archives, museums, visual arts, music, books, audiovisual materials - allocates significant resources to this endeavour, with the objective of providing carefully selected digital collections that are coherent, meaningful, easy to locate, and respect scientific requirements while making the material available to the broadest audience possible”, explained Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres. Most of the Ministry’s digitised collections can be accessed free of charge online, for example via the BNF’s website Gallica, one of the world’s largest digital libraries, with some 80,000 documents and over 70,000 images. All of the technical elements ensuring the methodical nature of the digitisation process are taken into account: rarity and fragility of the works, their usefulness for research and their contribution to increasing the visibility of French and European culture.

The creation of the European Digital Library will enable Internet users to view online all that has been written, drawn, painted, filmed, and photographed. “Yet digitisation cannot claim to disseminate this knowledge without taking into account the conditions framing its production”, emphasized Mr. Donnedieu de Vabres. The thorny issue of clearing rights remains. Copyright protection in Europe extends to 70 years after the death of the author, after which the text falls into the public domain. Such works will be made available online in their entirety, while Internet users will only be able to consult selected extracts of works still protected by copyright.

The age-old dream of putting the ancient library of Alexandria within the reach of all mankind is beginning to materialise, with one underlying theme: the preservation of collective interests and cultural diversity. “Culture is not a commercial product, it’s an attitude to life”, concluded Jean-Claude Juncker.

Annik Bianchini

Websites:

French Ministry of culture: www.culture.gouv.fr

French National Library (BNF): www.bnf.fr

Gallica: http: //gallica.bnf.fr

French embassy in the UK : www.ambafrance-uk.org

Last updated: 18.01.2006