European librarians march against Google

Librarians have always had it in for the colony - the unusual spellings in "American English" have always caused problems for their cataloguing systems.

However, what started out as a French plan to build a big virtual library that emphasised a Gallic spin on literature and history, seems to have got the backing of 19 other national libraries.

Of course, the idea has lost its Franco-centric theme and now calls for a Euro virtual library to balance the American English emphasis of the web.

The scheme will call for the EC to write a cheque for several million euro to fund a virtual library with all the old continent's books scanned in.

Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia, Spain and Sweden, signed the request to the EC.

In the UK, the British National Library has given its implicit support to the move, without signing the motion. the Bodlean in Oxford has already defected to the American Google project offering to scan around one million books published before 1900.

More on this from Associated Press, here. µ