France agreed Tuesday to work with Google to digitally scan French library books but insisted it would not surrender legal control of its cultural heritage to the US Internet giant.
Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand said he would approach Google to discuss their involvement while also pressing on with France's own digitisation efforts
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Last month President Nicolas Sarkozy announced a 750-million-euro (1.08-billion-dollar) package of state funding for digitisation of "the content of our museums, our libraries and our cinematographic heritage" via a public-private partnership.
Google, the world leader in Internet searches, is an obvious candidate with the expertise for a mass digitisation project, having already scanned vast numbers of works for its online library Google Books.
Last month it began scanning antique books from the major public collection in the southeastern French city of Lyon under a contract with the municipal library that controversially gives Google the rights to the works for 25 years.
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A Paris court ruled separately last month that Google had breached French publishers' copyright by scanning books for its online library.
Mitterrand said meanwhile France should push on with its own book-scanning project, an online catalogue of National Library documents called Gallica, but acknowledged criticisms of it in the report.
"I'm not sure we should keep that name," he told Le Monde. "It's a bit nationalistic and archaic."
The report commissioned by Mitterrand acknowledged Google's status as a leading player in digitisation but urged caution in negotiating the contracts with it to keep commercial control and digital distribution rights.
"No public policy can ignore the advances made by this private operator, at a world and a European level," it said, but added that France must "keep control of the digitisation process and above all the distribution of the digital content".
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Mitterrand said he would visit Google bosses at their US headquarters in March.
French Publishers Association (SNE) president Serge Eyrolles welcomed the initiative. The joint platform was "a good thing, especially for orphan works, although we must see how it will be managed".
Antoine Gallimard, head of the Gallimard publishing house, told The Bookseller: "We have been waiting for a decision like this for a long time," saying it meant "Google will not be able to do what it wants."
He added that publishers’ digital book distributors would link up through Dilicom, a book trade database, probably before the end of June, and that the hub created through this would work with the new national platform.
Publishers have been criticised for setting up rival distributors. Another report presented to Mitterrrand last week said a single distributor was indispensable and that the current fragmentation would be "a colossal handicap for online booksellers".
"French books would be referenced by Google Books, while the national platform would benefit from works already digitised by Google, especially those provided by foreign libraries," said the report, which was published on the ministry's website.
In an interview with newspaper Le Monde, Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand praised the idea and said if Google was not interested, France could approach other private operators.
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"The length of the exclusivity clauses is excessive," it said, citing 20 years as the period of reference in most contracts with Google. "(This) can run counter to the aim of libraries to provide access."
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