THE DIGITS WILL BE ALL THAT'S LEFT SOON (via Tom Morin):

Google Unites Europe (Robert MacMillan, April 29, 2005, washingtonpost.com)

France's decision to create an online repository of European literature got critical backing from five other European nations this week when the heads of Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland and Spain joined French President Jacques Chirac in asking for support from the European Union.

European media reported that a letter signed by the leaders asks EU President Jean-Claude Juncker and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso to coordinate the effort and, more importantly, cut a check to fund it. The letter comes after the national libraries of 19 European nations agreed to support the plan as well.

"The leaders of the undersigned national libraries wish to support the initiative of Europe's leaders aimed at a large and organised digitisation of the works belonging to our continent's heritage," the heads of the libraries wrote in a statement carried by the Associated Press. "Such a move needs a tight coordination of national ambitions at EU level to decide on the selection of works."

I first wrote about this idea earlier this month. At the time, the plan had what one British writer termed a "distinct Gallic spin," and seemed designed to wage a war of cultural defense against Google, that big, bad American search engine-company that got the jump on Europe by announcing a library indexing project of its own late last year.

Better translate them all into English and Spanish or no one will read them.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 1, 2005 10:29 PM