Digitizing or Not Digitizing Books

Doing things: Sidney Verba, director of the Harvard University Library, argues that Google's digital project will aid the library's broader mission to preserve academic material and make it accessible to the world. Outsiders have speculated that the company is spending more than $200 million on the entire project to accomplish in a decade a task which would have required a thousand year otherwise (New York Times).

Blocking things: Would Bibliothèque Nationale de France contemplate participation? Not at all. But it will make things more difficult if possible. Its director declares (in substance) that Google's intent is to challenge Europe (according to his book title) which must prevent the U.S. from dominating the view that future generations will form of the word (Amazon.fr).

In the meantime:BNF is investing 2,6€ million a year (www.bnf.fr).