The Tree of Cracow, situated in 18th-century Paris, was the gathering spot for gossips and debaters. It and a few similar places were where one went for information. Historian Robert Darnton writes that the tree probably got its name “from heated discussions that took place around it during the War of the Polish Succession (1733-1735), although the name also suggested rumor-mongering (craquer: to tell dubious stories).”

War debates and rumor-mongering; throw in shopping and pornography and the Internet is defined.

The Tree of Cracow inevitably led to a desire among Parisians for better information, and that led to the popularity of Mme. M. -A. L. Doublet’s salon, known for its reliable news, and soon to other versions of it, Mr. Darnton writes. The unbridled Internet is the world’s Tree of Cracow. Google yesterday announced its plans to open a salon to anyone who can log on.

The announcement by officials of the world’s most popular Internet search engine revealed an agreement with some of the nation’s leading research libraries to copy – digitize, in computer parlance – millions of books and papers, creating an electronic card catalog and making a vast number of books available on line and searchable. Libraries at Stanford, Harvard and the University of Michigan are involved in the project, as are the University of Oxford and the New York Public Library.

The project is expected to take a decade to complete, but when finished Google says its expects its users to be able to find standard texts, scholarly papers and out-of-print and rare books. One important sticking point is copyright. Google is starting with full books printed before 1900, but for books in which the copyright is in effect, it will offer bibliographic information and a few short passages of text, with links to libraries or booksellers nearby.

The democratization of data, that is, making information widely available through a reliable delivery system that can be returned to again and again, is about sharing power. This doesn’t merely mean government secrets, though a government that tries to hide more in this time is paddling against the tide of history, but also the ideas of the age. It includes in the debates of the day those places far from great libraries. Of course, those debates take place globally on the Internet now. The Google project provides hope that they might be better informed in the future.

Like so many sources of information, Google and its plans raise plenty of questions. For instance, will digitizing millions or tens of millions of books turn the books into artifacts and, therefore, libraries into museums? Will Google’s search techniques become the library standards? Will the way people read books change from page-by-page to the computer habit of a search for key words? Will the role of librarians become more important as guides to all this information or fade as patrons rely on computer searches?

The prospect of finding clearer answers to these questions as this project proceeds is exciting, if for no other reason than to see the Internet used popularly for something other than shopping. As computer use is increasingly institutionalized, beginning with elementary school, a chance to find the world’s great books in nearly everyone’s living room creates the potential for informed salons everywhere.