Book digitalisation must maintain cultural diversity

The National Library of France (BnF) is currently negotiating with the Internet company Google over the digitalisation of its book stocks. Lise Bissonette, former director of the National Library and Archives of Quebec, underlines in the daily Le Monde the global significance of such digitalisation ambitions on the part of large national libraries: "As enormous as the sums announced by Google may seem for acquiring the 'birthright' of the national libraries, in the long run they will seem to us no more than peanuts. The debate will only have been useful if it leads countries to adopt support strategies for digitalising the multiplicity of their cultural goods. ... Although the core issue here is our virtuous adhesion to the ideal of 'cultural diversity', this question is the most pressing yet curiously the most largely ignored in the Unesco convention adopted on the subject in 2005."

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