Advertisement
Promo

Accessibility Toolkit

EC to rival Google with massive digital library

Colin Barker ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 03 Oct 2005 12:35 BST

  • Email
  • Trackback
  • Clip Link
  • Print friendly
  • Post Comment

The European Commission (EC) is not prepared to sit back and let Google get a monopoly on the world's information, and is establishing a strategy to turn Europe's "historical and cultural heritage into digital content".

According to an EC announcement on Friday, the aim is to digitise and preserve records of Europe's heritage — including books, film fragments, photographs, manuscripts, speeches and music — and make it available online to all European citizens. To make this happen, the EU is proposing high-level cooperation between the member states and has set a deadline of 20 January, 2006, for the first comments on the plans.

Launching the proposals, Viviane Reding, the Information Society and Media commissioner, said: "Without a collective memory, we are nothing, and can achieve nothing. It defines our identity and we use it continuously for education, work and leisure."

The Commission acknowledged that making the resources in Europe's libraries and archives available on the Internet "is not straightforward" and sets out three key areas for action; digitisation, online accessibility and digital preservation. It also acknowledged that several initiatives are already under way within Europe such as the Collect Britain project in the UK which is backed by the British Library and part-funded by the National Lottery.

The issue of collecting the heritage of the world, and in particular its literature, has come into sharp focus recently with Google's efforts to amass the world's knowledge in one search engine. That plan hit legal problems last month as Google came under attack for ''a plain and brazen violation of copyright law" by a group representing thousands of authors in the US.

A report in the Wall Street Journal on Monday said that Yahoo was about to launch a similar scheme, but with the specific permission of copyright holders.

  • Email
  • Trackback
  • Clip Link
  • Print friendly
  • Post Comment

Did you find this article useful?
106 out of 201 people found this useful


Full Talkback thread

1 comment

  1. I'm sure France had something to do with this deci... Samuel, UK

Company/Topic Alerts

Create a new alert from the list below:




Video icon

Video

Vista Upgrade Blog

PreSales Canabalize Retailers' Opening...

(My attempt at writing a tabloid headline.) A Very Interesting Microsoft event just occurred. Microsoft is offering at a deep discount and through direct retail sale their FUTURE... More

Post a comment

Windows 7 on a Read-only Flash Drive?

Considering that the price of a 4GB USB flash drive has been as low as 5 dollars on close-out specials, financially it wouldn't make sense UNLESS Microsoft decides to go into the Flash... More

Post a comment

Bizarre Windows 7 Downgrade/Upgrade Po...

Over at the ZDNet U.S. site, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes has posted about what will apparently be a new low in bizarre downgrade/upgrade policies involving Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows... More

4 comments

Discussions

hkommedal hkommedal

About collecting data etc.

Thursday 9 July 2009, 10:18 PM

9 comments
Moley Moley

Re: Privacy Issues

Thursday 9 July 2009, 8:15 PM

9 comments

Skip Sub Navigation Links to CNET Brand Links

Help

Become part of the ZDNet community.

Newsletters