French scholars recently made news for taking a contrarian view of the Google Library project, asserting that the effort would obscure French contributions to our global intellectual heritage. Google-project defenders claim these concerns are unfounded as the French-language collections of the contributing universities are quite rich. No one need be proven right. The French protest was productively channeled into a call to action, with supporters moving quickly to launch a European digitization initiative.

This dust-up reminds those responsible for digitization and, in JSTOR's case, preservation of historical materials, to be mindful of choices and the consequences of decisions. Research and education are increasingly borderless endeavors. With advances in technology providing more opportunities for the scholarly community to gain access to the world's literature, it is important to actively ensure that the diverse scholarship around the world is represented.

At JSTOR, we are working to safeguard a more comprehensive selection of seminal literature. Our first steps toward archiving international journals began with Population: An English Selection (France) and Monumenta Nipponica (Japan) in Arts & Sciences I. Our Music and Language & Literature collections broadened our coverage significantly with the inclusion of titles from countries like Egypt and Hungary. We furthered these efforts recently by adding international journals in art history, folklore, and the biological sciences.

This year, JSTOR reached its 1000th non-U.S. library participant. We hope global access to JSTOR will, in part, open doors across borders for a more diverse scholarly discourse. Success will require creating a shared base of the most important scholarly literature.

We look forward to forging ahead.

Michael P. Spinella

Last updated on September 8, 2006