Author: Jean-noel Jeanneney File Type: pdf From BooklistStarred Review From Europes point of view, Googles proposal to digitize the contents of Americas leading libraries raises questions beyond the copyright issues that presently beleaguer the project. This brief salvo from the president of Frances Bibliotheque Nationale challenges directly Googles assertion that its venture offers a source of universal knowledge. Jeanneney finds such a claim spurious and utopian. For by the very nature of the library collections that Google proposes to put online, American and British works will dominate, leaving behind that portion of the worlds hundred million books not in English. Moreover, the character of digital search engines necessarily ranks results according to algorithms that reflect prejudices that lack universal validity. This quarrel is at least as ancient within librarianship as card catalogs. Jeanneney believes that Googles retrievals as presently constituted pass to the reader the merely noetic, not truly the intelligent, insightful, thoughtful, and genuinely helpful information implied by the notion of universal knowledge. Googles commercial status also troubles Jeanneney, for the commoditization of information by a single corporation inevitably subjects it to sale and to control by a less-benign owner. Mark Knoblauch American Library Association. ltReviewJean-Noel Jeanneney is horrified when he imagines how our children might come to see the world Will future generations think no great books have been written in a language other than English? And even worse Will they see history only through American eyes? The president of the French national library has made himself the frontman in what he sees as a struggle to save cultural diversity. In the postmodern world, the battleground is the internet. Here, search engines determine what tomorrows generations will click on, learn and think.--Financial Times(Financial Times )A take on world Googleization youre not likely to get from your broker. . . . [Jeanneney] brings his own high-wattage bulb to enlighten us. Be thankful we didnt ban French fries, French wine, and this very illuminating French book.--Carlin Romano, Philadelphia Inquirer(Carlin Romano Philadelphia Inquirer )Provides a crucial dissenting opinion. . . . The Google war chest has all but secured dominance over smaller library efforts, like the authors own project to digitize the French national collection. History judges societies by how they treat their most disadvantaged members. This book asks only that the Google economy be held to the same standard.David Ng, Forbes(David Ng Forbes )Whether Google maintains its hegemony in the realm of book digitization or in fact a robust non-Anglo-American challenger emerges to contest it, designers of the next big digital library will benefit from a careful readingof the big objections of this slim volume.(Henry Lowood Technology and Culture )A work that not only addresses a critical issue but articulates practical proposals that can, and should, command the attention of cultural policy-makers and decision-makers everywhere. It is also essential reading for the wider public. The issue is about which principles . . . should guide the processes of digitising the worlds literary heritage.(Colin Nettelbeck Australian Book Review )

Author: Evgeniĭ Aleksandrovich Dobrenko File Type: pdf This book explores how Soviet film worked with time, the past, and memory. It looks at Stalinist cinema and its role in the production of history, the conversion of the present and experience into history, mechanisms of transfer, and what is located between history and the past. The representation of history is always the representation of power. The institution of legitimization and the mechanism for the production of identity, history is the past, constructed and served by the authorities who are attempting to curtail the experience by packaging it into a literary narrative and new visual imagery. Cinemas role in the legitimization of Stalinism and the production of a new Soviet identity was enormous. Both Lenin and Stalin saw in this most important of arts the most effective form of propaganda and organisation of the masses. By examining the works of the greatest Soviet filmmakers of the Stalin era Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin, Grigorii Kozintsev, Leonid Trauberg, Fridrikh Ermler, Mark Donskoi, Mikhail Romm the author explores the role of the cinema in the formation of the Soviet political imagination.Key Features*The first study of Stalinist cinema, which fills a gap in the history of Soviet film.*Covers the works of great Soviet film directors.*Focuses on Stalinist political imagination, one of the most understudied aspects of Stalinism.