Amid the flat, wide fields of central France, a team of re-trained secretaries and IT experts is packaging Europe's literary heritage for the digital era.
Put less grandly, they turn pages for a living.
The company they work for, Safig, is one of the few European firms to digitize books, using automatic and human page-turners. That places them right at the center of France's plan for a massive online library, and its attempts to negotiate a digital books deal with US internet giant Google.
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Skeptics point out that Google's 10 million digitized books dwarf any French effort so far, such as Safig's three-year contract to scan 300,000 books for the Bibliotheque Nationale.
One possible outcome is a compromise with Google that would accelerate mass digitization.
"This is a bit like a factory. We don't make cars, but there's a strong parallel," [Project Leader Christophe] Danna said. Safig is paid per page, regardless of whether it is scanning a bodice-ripping classic or "Belgian Legislation on Professional Unions", a yellowing tome awaiting digitization here.
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Robert Darnton, director of the University Library at Harvard, even wants the United States to take France as a model.
"The technology is there and maybe the money is there to truly recreate the Republic of Letters," he told reporters on the sidelines of a conference in Paris.
"The state should support the cost of digitizing what they call the 'patrimoine', our holdings that belong to the whole nation," he added.
France has said it is ready to talk to Google over a joint project, but wants to extract far more generous terms than other partners - for example, through a free book swap.
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