European Libraries Fight Google-ization

Lee Hadden says:

Balkanization of Access
The question is not who does what, it is how to access what has been done? The main problem with digitalization today is that it is fragmented and disparate, or “Balkanized” if you want to use an European expression.
        Many projects digitizing books are duplicating previous efforts, such as the Alexandria Library in Egypt, the International Children’s Library of the Internet and Project Gutenberg.
        Of them all, Project Gutenberg is the best because it puts the text of the books in ASCII format, which can be used with almost any word processing platform. As a result, when the formats change, the infomration in Project Gutenberg remains valid.
      Other systems simply put in a .pdf file of the book page. When .pdf and Adobe are no longer the prime format for the Web, this will either have to be junked or re-done. Also, without special software, it is impossible to search and print out sections of the text.
      And the biggest problem of all, of course, is a one-stop place to find these items. If each digital book is cataloged in OCLC, and if OCLC made the cataloging record of free-access digitized books available to each customer, then their local library catalog would have the access to these books. At this point, the local high school student or the public library patron can actually access or download the book.
      Today, looking for a digitized book means looking in Project Gutenberg or the U. Penn Library of Alexandria Library or the Bibliotheque Nationale. There is no central place to go to find out who has done what, and certainly there is no way to corellate all this infomration and make it all available in one spot on everyone’s computer.
      Like Europe, eveyone’s access to digitized books is “Balkanized.” And that is the real shame.
        (Other shames are translating books into Arabic; stimulating Arabic, Ibo and other minority language groups’ book publishers and their textbook industry to preserve their culture; preserving national library collections at risk by digitalization, such as former Yugoslavian minorities collections, Kurdish collections, etc.; disciplined cataloging of international books so we can search by a rational and polyglot hierarchy of subject headings rather than by floundering in keyword searching- but don’t get me started on these- there aren’t enough soapboxes!)