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

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From Booklist
*Starred Review* From Europe's point of view, Google's proposal to digitize the contents of America's leading libraries raises questions beyond the copyright issues that presently beleaguer the project. This brief salvo from the president of France's Bibliotheque Nationale challenges directly Google's assertion that its venture offers a source of universal knowledge. Jeanneney finds such a claim spurious and utopian. For by the very nature of the library collections that Google proposes to put online, American and British works will dominate, leaving behind that portion of the world's hundred million books not in English. Moreover, the character of digital search engines necessarily ranks results according to algorithms that reflect prejudices that lack universal validity. This quarrel is at least as ancient within librarianship as card catalogs. Jeanneney believes that Google's retrievals as presently constituted pass to the reader the merely noetic, not truly the intelligent, insightful, thoughtful, and genuinely helpful information implied by the notion of universal knowledge. Google's commercial status also troubles Jeanneney, for the commoditization of information by a single corporation inevitably subjects it to sale and to control by a less-benign owner. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
Financial Times : “Jean-Noël Jeanneney is horrified when he imagines how our children might come to see the world: Will future generations think no great books have been written in a language other than English? And even worse: Will they see history only through American eyes?
            The president of the French national library has made himself the frontman in what he sees as a struggle to save cultural diversity. In the postmodern world, the battleground is the internet. Here, search engines determine what tomorrow''s generations will click on, learn and think.”--Financial Times
Carlin Romano Philadelphia Inquirer : "A take on world Googleization you''re not likely to get from your broker. . . . [Jeanneney] brings his own high-wattage bulb to enlighten us. Be thankful we didn''t ban French fries, French wine, and this very illuminating French book."--Carlin Romano, Philadelphia Inquirer
David Ng Forbes : “Provides a crucial dissenting opinion. . . . The Google war chest has all but secured dominance over smaller library efforts, like the author’s own project to digitize the French national collection. History judges societies by how they treat their most disadvantaged members. This book asks only that the Google economy be held to the same standard.”—David Ng, Forbes
Henry Lowood Technology and Culture : "Whether Google maintains its hegemony in the realm of book digitization or in fact a robust non-Anglo-American challenger emerges to contest it, designers of the next big digital library will benefit from a careful reading of the big objections of this slim volume."

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