While British librarians confine themselves to spats on lis-link about retrospective cataloguing, the French, as one might expect, do things on a grander scale. In an article entitled Numérisation des livres : Google or not Google ? Le Monde des Livres reports on the disagreement between Jean-Noel Jeanneny and Bruno Racine about Google. This is a curiously public disagreement which in this country would be conducted behind closed doors, for Racine succeeded Jeanneney as president of the Bibliothèque nationale de France in 2007. It is as if Brian Lang and Lynne Brindley were to fall out on Newsnight, or in the pages of the London Review of Books or the Times Literary Supplement.
Both men are former ministers. Jeanneny has issued a revised version of his pamphlet Quand Google défie l'Europe while Racine has produced Google et le nouveau monde. The former argues that the Europeana project is the way to go, the latter is much more friendly to Google and is reported to be negotiating with them, following in the Italian government's footsteps.
How will this develop? Europeana has yet to deliver much, if anything, while the monopolistic pretensions of Google are often denounced whenever librarians gather together. A realistic British position might be to say a plague on both your houses; one wonders that the French do not do the same.
