Chapter 2
According to the network tracking firm Netcraft, there were 100 million websites on November 1st, 2006. Previous milestones in the survey were reached in April 1997 (1 million sites), February 2000 (10 million), September 2000 (20 million), July 2001 (30 million), April 2003 (40 million), May 2004 (50 million), March 2005 (60 million), August 2005 (70 million), April 2006 (80 million ) and August 2006 (90 million).
1991: UNICODE
[Overview]
First published in January 1991, Unicode is the universal character encoding maintained by the Unicode Consortium. "Unicode provides a unique number for every character, no matter what the platform, no matter what the program, no matter what the language." (excerpt from the website) This double-byte platform-independent encoding provides a basis for the processing, storage and interchange of text data in any language, and any modern software and information technology protocols. Unicode is a component of the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) specifications.
1993: ONLINE BOOKS PAGE
[Overview]
Founded in 1993 by John Mark Ockerbloom while he was a student at Carnegie Mellon University, The Online Books Page is "a website that facilitates access to books that are freely readable over the internet. It also aims to encourage the development of such online books, for the benefit and edification of all." (excerpt from the website) John Ockerbloom first maintained this page on the website of the School of Computer Science of Carnegie Mellon University. In 1999, he moved it to its present location at the University of Pennsylvania Library, where he is a digital library planner and researcher. The Online Books Page listed 12,000 books in 1999, 20,000 books in 2003 (including 4,000 books published by women), 25,000 books in 2006 and 30,000 books in 2007. The books "have been authored, placed online, and hosted by a wide variety of individuals and groups throughout the world", with 7,000 books from Project Gutenberg. The FAQ also lists copyright information about most countries in the world with links to further reading.
[In Depth (published in 1999)]
John Mark Ockerbloom first started the website of the School of Computer Science of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU CS), and began maintaining The Online Books Page on it. Web space and computing resources were provided by the School of Computer Science.
Interviewed by email in September 1998, John wrote: "I was the original webmaster here at CMU CS, and started our local web in 1993. The local web included pages pointing to various locally developed resources, and originally The Online Books Page was just one of these pages, containing pointers to some books put online by some of the people in our department. (Robert Stockton had made web versions of some of Project Gutenberg's texts.)
After a while, people started asking about books at other sites, and I noticed that a number of sites (not just Gutenberg, but also Wiretap and some other places) had books online, and that it would be useful to have some listing of all of them, so that you could go to one place to download or view books from all over the net. So that's how my index got started.
I eventually gave up the webmaster job in 1996, but kept The Online Books Page, since by then I'd gotten very interested in the great potential the net had for making literature available to a wide audience. At this point there are so many books going online that I have a hard time keeping up (and in fact have a large backlog of books to list). But I hope to keep up my online books works in some form or another.
I am very excited about the potential of the internet as a mass communication medium in the coming years. I'd also like to stay involved, one way or another, in making books available to a wide audience for free via the net, whether I make this explicitly part of my professional career, or whether I just do it as a spare-time volunteer."
In 1998, The Online Books Page listed more than 7,000 books, which could be browsed by author, by title 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 scholarship 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 participated 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 Document 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 documents 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 documents 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 documents, reduced opening hours, forms to fill out, long waiting period to get the document, 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 document.
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, classics, literature, history, and economics. As Geneva is in French-speaking Switzerland, it also focused on putting French texts online. The Helvetia section gathered documents 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 participation 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: Massachusetts Institute 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 documents 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 Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council. In 1994, NAP was publishing 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: Massachusetts Institute of Technology) was publishing 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 documents 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 Japan (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 titles 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, title, ISBN or publication date. Prices were discounted, with savings of 20-40% on 400,000 titles (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 competition" 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 assets, 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 space. 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
[Overview]
The first electronic versions of print newspapers were available in the early 1990s through commercial services like America Online and CompuServe. In 1995, newspapers and magazines began creating their own websites to offer a partial or full version of their latest issue - available freely or through subscription (free or paid) - with online archives. In Europe, the Times and the Sunday Times set up a common website called Times Online, with a way to create a personalized edition. The weekly publication The Economist also went online in UK, as well as the weekly Focus and the weekly Der Spiegel in Germany, the daily Le Monde and daily Libération in France, and the daily El País in Spain. The computer press went logically online as well, like the monthly Wired, created in 1992 in California to cover cyberculture as "the magazine of the future at the avant-garde of the 21st century", or ZDNet, another leading computer magazine. More and more "only" electronic magazines were also created.
[In Depth (published in 1999)]
The first electronic versions of newspapers were available in the early 1990s through commercial services like America Online or CompuServe. Then, in 1995, newspapers and magazines began to create websites to offer the full version of their latest issue - available freely or through subscription (free or paid) - which was then archived online. There were also heated debates on copyright issues for articles posted on the web. More and more "only" electronic magazines were created.
In 1996, the New York Times site could be accessed free of charge. It included the contents of the daily newspaper, breaking news updates every ten minutes, and original reporting available only online. The Washington Post site provided the daily news online, with a full database of articles including images, sound and video.
In Europe, the Times and the Sunday Times set up a common website called Times Online, with the possibility to create a personalized edition. The respected Economist was also available online, as were the French daily newspapers Le Monde and Libération, the Spanish daily newspaper El País or the German weekly magazines Focus or Der Spiegel.
The computer press went online as well. First the monthly Wired, created in 1992 in California to focus on cyberculture and be the magazine of the future at the avant-garde of the 21st century. Then ZDNet, a main publisher of computer magazines.
Behind the news, the web was providing a whole encyclopedia to help us understand them. The web was providing instant access to a wealth of information (geographical maps, biographical notes, official texts, political and economic data, audiovisual and video data); speed in information dissemination; access to main photographic archives; links to articles, archives and data on the same topic; and a search engine to browse articles by date, author, title, subject, etc.
From the start, there were also all these zines using the internet as a cheap way to get published. John Labovitz launched The E-Zine-List in Summer 1993 to list electronic zines (e-zines) around the world, the ones that were accessible via the web, FTP, gopher, email, and other services. The list was updated monthly.
What exactly is a zine? John Labovitz explained on his website: "For those of you not acquainted with the zine world, 'zine' is short for either 'fanzine' or 'magazine', depending on your point of view. Zines are generally produced by one person or a small group of people, done often for fun or personal reasons, and tend to be irreverent, bizarre, and/or esoteric. Zines are not 'mainstream' publications - they generally do not contain advertisements (except, sometimes, advertisements for other zines), are not targeted towards a mass audience, and are generally not produced to make a profit. An 'e-zine' is a zine that is distributed partially or solely on electronic networks like the internet."
3,045 zines were listed on November 29, 1998. John wrote on his website: "Now the e-zine world is different. The number of e-zines has increased a hundredfold, crawling out of the FTP and Gopher woodworks to declaring themselves worthy of their own domain name, even asking for financial support through advertising. Even the term 'e-zine' has been co-opted by the commercial world, and has come to mean nearly any type of publication distributed electronically. Yet there is still the original, independent fringe, who continue to publish from their heart, or push the boundaries of what we call a 'zine'." John stopped updating his list a few years later.
1996: INTERNET ARCHIVE
[Overview]