Date:
March 30, 2006

Location:
Residencia de Estudiantes

Directors:
José Antonio Millán and Carlos Wert

Organize:
Residencia de Estudiantes

Collaborate:
Fundación Francisco Giner de los Rios [Institución Libre de Enseñanza]
Ministry of Culture
Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Commerce

The global launching of Google Book Search and its project of digitizing 15 million books (in addition to the previous, but less striking, initiative from Amazon) has caused an unprecedented upheaval in the world of books from publishers to libraries. The trigger was the publication of an article in Le Monde, on January 2005, by the director of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Jean-Noël Jeanneney, on the dangers of American domination of world culture.

Among the many reactions, one had an immediate political consequence: the plan to create a European digital library, even a European browser. Initiatives came from the publishing world, such as the one from McMillan, to create a project similar to Google's.

The best of these events, however, has been the extensive and rich three-way debate among the world of publishing, libraries and browsers on the web, closely followed by everyone in the cultural milieu, on the aims of cultural accumulation and the means to spread it on the eve of the third millennium.

This seminar brings representatives of all parties involved in an open and active dialogue on the many challenges involved in the digitization of culture.