French president Jacques Chirac has called for the digitization of millions of European writings that would then be made available over the Internet. Officials claim that the move is intended to make works relevant to Europeans available, and is not merely a reaction to the plans of Google and prominent American and British universities and libraries to make available millions of volumes from the institutions’ collective holdings. In a January essay in Le Monde, the president of the National Library of France warned that the digitization of so many American works might influence “the idea that future generations will have of the world.”
