(September 1 2005) French president Jaques Chirac is planning a digitization of European libraries in an attempt to challenge the dominance of Anglo-saxon culture online. He hopes the project will rival Google Print.

Chirac fears that Google’s “industrial scale” digitization of Anglo-Saxon library book collections, will lead to the internet being dominated by English language priorities.

The French culture minister, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres and the president of the National Library of France, Jean-Noel Jeanneney share his fears and are joining him in planning a counter attack. With Chirac they feel that access to the collections of European national libraries are “fundamental for the dissemination of knowledge”.

It is certainly true that European libraries are treasure troves of knowledge and if Chirac and his ministers succeed in their ambitious project, it will be of great value to scholars everywhere.

The good folks at Googleplex are probably not loosing much sleep over this French declaration of war, though, and why should they? Google Print is a great product that makes the world a more interesting place to be.

But Europeans (and the Pandia team are among them) might worry. Even though the results of this project may one day be of great service to a great number of people, right now Chirac’s attitude comes across as hostile. And the signals he is sending can be interpreted as insecurity and feelings of inferiority on behalf of European cultures.