However, the country's second largest library, in Lyon, is cooperating with Google and lets its books be scanned. And the French National Library is currently negotiating with the internet giant, which offers to digitize books for libraries at no cost.

On Friday, the US Justice Department urged a court to reject a $125-million settlement between Google and authors and publishers that would have enabled the California-based company to expand the availability of digitised books on the internet.

The agreement likely violated copyright and antitrust laws, the Justice Department argued. A decision on the agreement had been set for Oct 7, but that is now likely to be delayed.

The controversial agreement came after Google had scanned some 10 million books, more than half of them without taking account of copyright.