Technology and Books for All Part 2

In 1998, The Online Books Page listed more than 7,000 books, which could be browsed by author, by t.i.tle or by subject. It also listed significant directories and archives of online texts, and special exhibits. From the main search page, users could search four types of media: books, music, art, and video.

The Online Books Page began listing serials. As stated on the website: "Along with books, The Online Books Page is also now listing major archives of serials (such as magazines, published journals, and newspapers), as of June 1998. Serials can be at least as important as books in library research. Serials are often the first places that new research and scholars.h.i.+p appear. They are sources for firsthand accounts of contemporary events and commentary, They are also often the first (and sometimes the only) place that quality literature appears.

(For those who might still quibble about serials being listed on a 'books page', back issues of serials are often bound and reissued as hardbound 'books'.)"

The Online Books Page partic.i.p.ated in the Experimental Search System of the Library of Congress. It also worked with The Universal Library Project, hosted at Carnegie Mellon University.

In 1999, after graduating from Carnegie Mellon with a Ph.D. in computer science, John moved to work as a digital library planner and researcher at the University of Pennsylvania Library. He also moved The Online Books Page there, and went on expanding it.

1993: PDF

[Overview]

PDF (Portable Doc.u.ment Format) was conceived by Adobe in 1992, launched in June 1993 with Adobe Acrobat software, and perfected over 15 years as the global standard for distribution and viewing of information. It "lets you capture and view robust information from any application, on any computer system and share it with anyone around the world.

Individuals, businesses, and government agencies everywhere trust and rely on Adobe PDF to communicate their ideas and vision." (excerpt from the website) Adobe Acrobat gives the tools to create and view PDF files and is available in many languages and for many platforms (Macintosh, Windows, Unix, etc.). Ten years later, over 500 million copies of PDF-based Adobe Reader (formerly Acrobat Reader, until May 2003) have been downloaded worldwide. Approximately 10% of the doc.u.ments on the internet are available in PDF.

1994: LIBRARY WEBSITES

[Overview]

The first library website was the one created by the Helsinki City Library in Finland, which went live in February 1994. Traditional libraries began using a website as a new virtual window for their patrons and beyond. Patrons could check opening hours, browse the online catalog, or surf on a broad selection of websites on various topics, depending on their needs. Libraries also began developing digital libraries alongside their standard collections, for a large audience to be able to access their specialized, old, local and regional collections. Librarians could now fulfill two goals that used to be in contradiction - book preservation (on shelves) and book communication (on the internet).

[In Depth (published in 1999)]

The first library website was the one created by the Helsinki City Library in Finland, which went live in February 1994. Many libraries began developing a digital library alongside their standard collections. Digital libraries allowed a large audience to have access to doc.u.ments belonging to specialized, old, local or regional collections. Thanks to their digital libraries, traditional libraries could achieve a long-time dream and fulfill two goals which used to be in contradiction - book preservation and book communication. On the one hand, books were taken out of their shelves only once to be scanned. On the other hand, books could easily be accessed anywhere at any time, and read on the screen of a computer, without the need to go to the library and struggle through a lengthy process to have access to the original books, for various reasons: concern for preservation of rare and fragile doc.u.ments, reduced opening hours, forms to fill out, long waiting period to get the doc.u.ment, and shortage of staff. All these reasons were often hurdles to get over, and often required of the researcher an unfailing patience and an out-of-the-ordinary determination to finally get to the doc.u.ment.

Some virtual libraries were created from scratch, right on the internet from the beginning, with no back up from a traditional library. This was the case of Athena, founded in 1994 by Pierre Perroud, a Swiss teacher, and hosted on the website of the University of Geneva, Switzerland. Athena was created as a multilingual digital library focusing on philosophy, science, cla.s.sics, literature, history, and economics. As Geneva is in French-speaking Switzerland, it also focused on putting French texts online. The Helvetia section gathered doc.u.ments about Switzerland. A specific page offered a number of links to other digital libraries in the world.

In an interview dated February 1996, Pierre Perroud explained: "Electronic texts represent an encouragement to reading and a convivial partic.i.p.ation to culture dissemination, (...) [and] a good complement to the paper book, which remains irreplaceable for reading (...). [The paper book] remains a mysteriously holy companion with profound symbolism for us: we grip it in our hands, we hold it against our bodies, we look at it with admiration; its small size comforts us and its content impresses us; its fragility contains a density we are fascinated by; like man it fears water and fire, but it has the power to shelter man's thoughts from time." (excerpt from the Swiss magazine Informatique-Informations)

The Internet Public Library (IPL) opened in March 1995 as the first digital public library of and for the internet community. Its different sections were: Reference, Exhibits, Magazines and Serials, Newspapers, Online Texts, and Web Searching. There were also sections for Teen and Youth. All the items of the collections were carefully selected, catalogued and described by the IPL staff. As an experimental library, IPL also listed the most interesting projects run by librarians on the internet, in the section Especially for Librarians.

1994: BOLD PUBLISHERS

[Overview]

Some publishers decided to use the web as a new marketing tool. In the U.S., NAP (National Academy Press) was the first publisher in 1994 to post the full text of some books, for free, with the authors' consent.

NAP was followed by MIT Press (MIT: Ma.s.sachusetts Inst.i.tute of Technology) in 1995. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, wrote in 1997: "As university publishers struggle to find the right business model for offering scholarly doc.u.ments online, some early innovators are finding that making a monograph available electronically can boost sales of hard copies." (excerpt from the Project Gutenberg Newsletter of October 1997)

[In Depth (published in 1999)]

The web became a marketing tool for publishers. Some publishers decided to put the full text of some books on the web, for free, with their authors' consent. Oddly enough, there was no drop in sales - on the contrary, sales increased. In the US, NAP was the first publisher to take such a risk in 1994, followed by the MIT Press in 1995, and it worked.

NAP (National Academy Press) was created by the National Academy of Sciences to publish its own reports and the ones of the National Academy of Engineering, the Inst.i.tute of Medicine, and the National Research Council. In 1994, NAP was publis.h.i.+ng 200 books a year in science, engineering, and health. The new NAP Reading Room offered 1,000 entire books, available online for free in various formats ("image" format, HTML format and PDF format).

In 1995, the MIT Press (MIT: Ma.s.sachusetts Inst.i.tute of Technology) was publis.h.i.+ng 200 new books a year and 40 journals, first in science and technology, and then in architecture, social theory, economics, cognitive science, and computational science. The MIT Press decided to put a number of books online for free, as "a long-term commitment to the efficient and creative use of new technologies." Sales of the print books increased.

Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, wrote in 1997: "As university publishers struggle to find the right business model for offering scholarly doc.u.ments online, some early innovators are finding that making a monograph available electronically can boost sales of hard copies. The National Academy Press has already put 1,700 of its books online, and is finding that the electronic versions of some books have boosted sales of the hard copy monographs - often by two to three times the previous level. It's 'great advertising', says the Press's director. The MIT Press is experiencing similar results: 'For each of our electronic books, we've approximately doubled our sales. The plain fact is that no one is going to sit there and read a whole book online.

And it costs money and time to download it'." (excerpt from the Project Gutenberg Newsletter of October 1997)

1995: AMAZON.COM

[Overview]

Amazon.com was a "pioneer" online bookstore that created an entirely new economic model. Amazon.com was launched by Jeff Bezos in July 1995, in Seattle, on the west coast of the U.S., after a market study which led him to conclude that books were the best products to sell on the internet. When Amazon.com started, it had 10 employees and a catalog of 3 million books. Unlike traditional bookstores, Amazon.com didn't have windows looking out on the street and books skillfully lined up on shelves or piled upon displays. The virtual window is its website, with all transactions made through the internet. Books are stored in huge storage facilities before being put into boxes and sent by mail. In November 2000, Amazon.com had 7,500 employees, a catalog of 28 million items, 23 million clients worldwide and four subsidiaries in UK (in August 1998), in Germany (in August 1998), in France (August 2000) and in j.a.pan (October 2000). A fifth subsidiary opened in Canada in June 2002. A sixth subsidiary - named Joyo - opened in China in September 2004.

[In Depth (published in 1999)]

Jeff Bezos launched Amazon.com in July 1995, after a market study which led him to conclude that books were the best products to sell on the internet.

In Spring 1994, he drew up a list of twenty products that could be sold online, ranging from clothing to gardening tools, and then researched the top five, which were CDs, videos, computer hardware, computer software, and books.

"I used a whole bunch of criteria to evaluate the potential of each product, but among the main criteria was the size of the relative markets. Books, I found out, were an $82 billion market worldwide. The price point was another major criterion: I wanted a low-priced product.

I reasoned that since this was the first purchase many people would make online, it had to be non-threatening in size. A third criterion was the range of choice: there were 3 million items in the book category and only a tenth of that in CDs, for example. This was important because the wider the choice, the more the organizing and selection capabilities of the computer could be put in good use."

(excerpt from the Amazon.com press kit)

In 1998, Amazon.com was offering 3 million books, CDs, audio books, DVDs, computer games - more than 14 times as many t.i.tles as the large chain superstores - to 3 million people in 160 countries. "Businesses can do things on the web that simply cannot be done any other way", wrote Jeff Bezos. "We are changing the way people buy books and music."

Amazon.com quickly became the largest online bookstore, with a catalog of these 3 million items that could be ordered online, authoritative reviews, author interviews, excerpts, customer reviews, and book recommendations. As an internet retailer, Amazon.com could offer more services than traditional retailers: lower prices, larger selection, and a wealth of product information.

Any book lover could post his own reviews of books on Amazon's website, and read others. He could read many interviews with authors, and a number of blurbs and excerpts from books. He could search for books by author, subject, t.i.tle, ISBN or publication date. Prices were discounted, with savings of 20-40% on 400,000 t.i.tles (40% on selected feature books, 30% on hardcovers, and 20% on paperbacks). The client usually received the books within a week. If he requested it, he could receive an email announcing a new book by a favorite author or a new book on a favorite topic. He could select some book categories (44 listed), to be sent a monthly review of new books by email. All things that were entirely new at the time.

What we take for granted now, i.e. buy a book in Europe from the US site of Amazon.com, or buy a book in the US from the German site of Amazon.de, was making big waves at the time, first as "unfair compet.i.tion" with the local online bookstores, then for taxation. A first outline agreement was concluded between the US and the European Union in December 1997, and this agreement was followed by an international convention. The internet was decided a free trade area, i.e. without any custom taxes for software, films and electronic books bought online. Material goods (books, CDs, DVDs, and so on) and services were subject to existing regulations, with collection of the VAT for example, but with no additional custom taxes.

Amazon.com and others had great a.s.sets, but there were bad news for small bookstores. Like the small bookstore set up in 1971 by my friend Catherine Domain in central Paris, on the island Ile Saint-Louis, surrounded by the Seine river.

The small Ulysses Bookstore is known as the oldest travel bookstore in the world. It has more than 20,000 books, maps and magazines, out of print and new, in a number of languages, about any country and any kind of travel, all packed up in a tiny s.p.a.ce. Catherine has been a traveller since she was a child. She travels every summer - usually sailing - while her boyfriend runs the bookstore. She is also a member of the French National Union of Antiquarian and Modern Bookstores (SLAM), the Explorers' Club and the International Club of Long-Distance Travellers.

Catherine visited 140 countries, where she sometimes had a hard time.

But one of her most difficult challenges was to set up a website on her own, from scratch, without knowing anything about computers. Catherine wrote in December 1999: "My site is still pretty basic and under construction. Like my bookstore, it is a place to meet people before being a place of business. The internet is a pain in the neck, takes a lot of my time and I earn hardly any money from it, but that doesn't worry me..." Nevertheless, despite the internet, she was pessimistic about the future. "I am very pessimistic, because the internet is killing off specialist bookstores."

1995: ONLINE PRESS