SARKOZY vs GOOGLE

From The Times, 10 December

Nicolas Sarkozy seeks to fend off Google’s threat to French culture

Google’s plans to provide digital versions of classic books over the internet have run into trouble in France after President Sarkozy vowed to spend hundreds of millions of euros to see off what he regards as a threat to the country’s cultural heritage.

Mr Sarkozy has signalled that he will earmark a substantial portion of a new state investment fund to try to head off Google’s drive to digitise French-language and European books and art.

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DOOM OR BLOOM: Proceedings

 

SEMINAR PROCEEDINGS

Recordings of the seminar are already available

 

Thursday, October 29, 2009 at the Institut Français London

Europeana – Think Culture http://www.europeana.eu/portal/

Project presentation
Previous experiences, challenges and outlook

• Jonathan Purday, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Netherlands (.ppt)

Survival with the Fittest - the Google Library Project

Political, strategic and professional implications of the Google digitisation programme for public and academic libraries. Chances and challenges of a private public partnership in information management and retrieval for the benefit of the public.

• Manuela Palafox, Universidad Complutense Madrid, Spain (.ppt)
• Hason Hanley, Google UK (.ppt)

 

Books meet Bytes – Does the book stand a chance in the future?
E-book accessibility in libraries versus direct supply via online-services, book stores, publishers, e-book service providers? Prices, handling and comfort, consumer behaviour and market competition?

• Helena Patrício , Information Systems Director of the National Library of Portugal (.ppt)
• Christian Hasiewicz, Director of Library Services, DiViBIB, Germany (.ppt)
• Jaroslaw Lipszyc, Chair of the Modern Poland Foundation (.pdf) (video)

 

My Ideal Library - the voice of the Google and iPod generation.

• Luke Roskilly, goodlogicprojects, London (.ppt)

The Library of the Future – lean information machine or cultural space?

Do our present libraries have a future? Will the library as a space vanish? Will the librarian be an avatar? An intriguing vision on the function, social role and physical presence of libraries in the knowledge society.

• Fereshteh Afshari: Library Services, Imperial College Library, London (.pdf)
• Dominique Stutzmann : Survey on requirements of digital research services in libraries – Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris (.doc) (.ppt)
• Olaf Eigenbrodt, Building consultant at the University Library of Humboldt-Universität Berlin, Germany (.ppt) 

*EUROLIS, a group of librarians and members of the Cultural institutes of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain, and members of CILIP in London, is part of EUNIC (European Union National Institutes for Culture) .

 

STENDHAL in the 21st century

French university brings manuscripts of Stendhal into the 21st century

Website uses cutting-edge technology to place author’s barely legible manuscripts next to scrupulous modern-day transcripts.

He was born before the French revolution, lived through the Napoleonic wars and died having spent his life documenting the anxieties and aspirations of a peculiarly tumultuous era.

But now Marie-Henri Beyle, or Stendhal as he came to be known, has become the latest of France’s literary giants to be dragged into the 21st century courtesy of painstaking research and cutting-edge digital technology.

Read more: The Guardian.co.uk