Part 3

[Summary] Jeff Bezos launched Amazon.com in July 1995 in Seattle, on the West Coast, after a market study which led him to conclude that books were the best products to sell on the internet. The online bookstore started with 10 employees and a catalog of 3 million books. Unlike traditional bookstores, Amazon's windows were its webpages, with transactions made through the internet. Books were stored in huge storage facilities before being put into boxes and sent by mail. In November 2000, Amazon had 7,500 employees, a catalog of 28 million items, 23 million clients worldwide and four subsidiaries in United Kingdom (launched in August 1998), Germany (August 1998), France (August 2000), and Japan (November 2000). A fifth subsidiary opened in Canada in June 2002. A sixth subsidiary, named Joyo, opened in China in September 2004. In July 2005, for its 10th anniversary, Amazon had 41 million clients and 9,000 employees.

***

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

The online bookstore started with 10 employees and a catalog of 3 million books, i.e. the catalog of books available for sale in the U.S. Unlike traditional bookstores, Amazon's windows were its webpages, with transactions made through the internet. Books were stored in huge storage facilities before being put into boxes and sent by mail.

What exactly was the idea behind Amazon.com? In spring 1994, Jeff Bezos 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.

As recalled by Jeff Bezos in 1997 in Amazon's press kit: "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."

In the wake of the Internet Bookstore in United Kingdom, that was the largest online bookstore in Europe, Amazon.com launched is own Associates Program in spring 1997. There were 30,000 associates in spring 1998, and 60,000 associates in June 1998.

As stated in a press release dated 8 June 1998 to promote the program: "The Amazon.com Associates Program allows website owners to easily participate in hassle-free electronic commerce by recommending books on their site and referring visitors to Amazon.com. In return, participants earn referral fees of up to 15 percent of the sales they generate. Amazon.com handles the secure online ordering, customer service, and shipping and sends weekly email sales reports. Enrollment in the program is free, and participants can be up and running the same day. Associates range from large and small businesses to nonprofits, authors, publishers, personal home pages, and more. The popularity of the program is reflected in the range of additions to the Associates Community in the past few months: Adobe, InfoBeat, Kemper Funds, PR Newswire, Travelocity, Virtual Vineyards, and Xoom."

People could search Amazon's online catalog by author, title, subject, date or ISBN. The website offered excerpts from books, book reviews, customer reviews, and author interviews. People could "leaf" through extracts and reviews, order some books online, and pay with their credit card. Books arrived within a week at their doorstep. As an online retailer, Amazon could offer lower prices than local bookstores, a larger selection, and a wealth of product information. Customers could subscribe to a mailing list to get reviews of new books by their favorite authors, or new books in their favorite topics, with 44 topics to choose from. In 1998, Amazon was also selling CDs, DVDs, audio books and computer games, with 3 million clients in 160 countries.

Amazon's main competitor was the online bookstore of Barnes & Noble, a major bookseller with 481 stores nationwide in 1997, in 48 states out of 50, as well as 520 B. Dalton stores in shopping malls. Barnes & Noble first launched its America OnLine (AOL) website in March 1997, as the exclusive bookseller for the 12 million AOL customers, before launching its own website barnesandnoble.com in May 1997 in partnership with Bertelsmann (Barnes & Noble bought Bertelsmann's portion (36,8%) back for 164 million dollars in July 2003).

Barnes & Noble's site offered significant discounts: 30% off all in- stock hardcovers, 20% off all in-stock paperbacks, 40% off select titles, and up to 90% off bargain books. Its Affiliate Network spread quickly, with 12,000 affiliate websites in May 1998, including CNN Interactive, Lycos and ZDNet. One year later, Barnes & Noble.com launched a revamped website with a better design, an Express Lane one- click ordering, improved book search capabilities, and a new software "superstore". A fierce price war began with Amazon for the best book discounts, and Amazon.com came to be known as Amazon.toast, which didn't last. With a two-year head start, Amazon stayed ahead in the competition.

Amazon launched its eBookStore in November 2000, three months after Barnes & Noble, after partnering in August 2000 with Microsoft to sell ebooks for the Microsoft Reader, and with Adobe to offer ebooks for the Acrobat Reader and the Glassbook Reader -- Adobe had just bought Glassbook, its reader and its digital bookstore. In April 2001, Amazon.com partnered again with Adobe to include 2,000 copyrighted books for the Acrobat eBook Reader, mainly titles from major publishers, travel guides and children books.

In November 2000, Amazon had 7,500 employees, a catalog of 28 million items, 23 million clients worldwide and four subsidiaries in United Kingdom (launched in August 1998), Germany (August 1998), France (August 2000) and Japan (November 2000). A fifth subsidiary opened in Canada in June 2002, and a sixth subsidiary, named Joyo, opened in China in September 2004. In July 2005, for its 10th anniversary, Amazon had 9,000 employees and 41 million clients.

1996 > THE INTERNET ARCHIVE, FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS

[Summary] Founded in April 1996 by Brewster Kahle in San Francisco, California, the Internet Archive wanted to offer a permanent access of the web "through the ages" to present and future generations. In October 2001, with 30 billion stored webpages, the Internet Archive launched the Wayback Machine, for internet users throughout the world to be able to surf the archive of a given website by date. In 2004, there were 300 terabytes of data, with a growth of 12 terabytes per month. There were 65 billion webpages (from 50 million websites) in 2006, 85 billion webpages in 2008, and 150 billion webpages in March 2010. The Internet Archive has also defined itself as "a nonprofit digital library dedicated to providing universal access to human knowledge", building up an online library of text, audio, software, image and video content. In October 2005, it launched the Open Content Alliance (OCA) with a number of partner organizations to build a universal digital library of multilingual digitized text and multimedia content.

***

Founded in April 1996 by Brewster Kahle, the Internet Archive wanted to offer permanent access of the web "through the ages" to present and future generations.

As explained on the website at the time, throughout history, societies have sought to preserve their culture and heritage for present and future generations, and libraries have been created to preserve the paper trail of that culture and legacy, and to facilitate its access to the general public and researchers. Therefore it seems essential to extend their mission to new technology. Paradoxically this was done poorly in the early 20th century. Many movies were recycled -- and thus lost forever -- to retrieve the silver layer. Many radio or TV programs were not saved. It is important not to repeat the same mistakes for the internet, especially for the web, a new medium the extent of which is still unknown in 1996. This is the raison d'etre of the Internet Archive, that has defined itself as "a nonprofit digital library dedicated to providing universal access to human knowledge."

The whole web was stored every two months or so on the servers of the Internet Archive in San Francisco, California, for researchers, historians and scholars to be able to access it.

In October 2001, with 30 billion stored webpages, the Internet Archive launched the Wayback Machine, for internet users throughout the world to be able to surf the archive of a given website by date.

In 2004, there were 300 terabytes of data, with a growth of 12 terabytes per month. There were 65 billion pages (from 50 million websites) in 2006, 85 billion pages in 2008, and 150 billion pages in March 2010.

In late 1999, the Internet Archive also became an online library of text, audio, software, image and video content, for example some books of the Million Book Project (10,520 books in April 2005), films for the period 1903-1973, live concerts, software, sites about September 11, sites about elections, and sites about the web pioneers, with all collections freely available on the web.

As a side remark, the Million Book Project, also called the Universal Library or Universal Digital Library (UDL), was launched in January 2000 by the Carnegie Mellon University (Pennsylvania) with the aim to digitize one million books in a number of languages, including in libraries from India and China. The project was completed in 2007, with one million books available on the university website, as image files in DjVu and TIFF formats, and three mirror sites (India, Northern China, Southern China).

In October 2005, the Internet Archive launched the Open Content Alliance (OCA) as a group of cultural, technology, non profit, and governmental organizations, with the aim to build a world public permanent archive of multilingual digitized text and multimedia content. The OCA started to digitize public domain books around the world, and to include them in the collection of the Internet Archive.

1996 > LIBRARIES LAUNCHED WEBSITES

[Summary] The Helsinki City Library in Finland was the first library to launch a website, which went live in February 1994. Two years later, more and more libraries started their own websites as a virtual window for their patrons and beyond. Patrons could check opening hours, browse the online catalog, and surf a broad selection of websites on various topics. Libraries developed digital libraries alongside their standard collections, so that anyone could access their specialized, old, local and regional collections, including for images and sound. Librarians could finally fulfill two goals that used to be in contradiction: preservation (on shelves) and communication (on the internet). Debates were fierce about the assets of the print book versus the digital book, and vice versa.

***

In the mid-1990s, libraries started their own websites as a virtual window for their patrons and beyond, with an online catalog and a digital library.

In his book "Books in My Life", published by the Library of Congress in 1985, Robert Downs, a librarian, wrote: "My lifelong love affair with books and reading continues unaffected by automation, computers, and all other forms of the twentieth-century gadgetry."

Automation and computers were followed by the internet (1974) and the web (1990), and eased the work of librarians in some way.

The Helsinki City Library in Finland was the first library to launch a website, which went live in February 1994. Other libraries started their own websites as a virtual window for their patrons and beyond. Patrons could check opening hours, browse the online catalog, and surf on a broad selection of websites on various topics.

Libraries also developed digital libraries alongside their standard collections, so that anyone could access their specialized, old, local and regional collections, including for images and sound. Librarians could finally fulfill two goals that used to be in contradiction: preservation (on shelves) and communication (on the internet). People could now leaf through digital facsimiles, and access the original books only if necessary.

# At the British Library

In "Information Systems Strategy", a document posted on the British Library's website in 1997, Brian Lang, chief executive of the library, stated: "We do not envisage an exclusively digital library. We are aware that some people feel that digital materials will predominate in libraries of the future. Others anticipate that the impact will be slight. In the context of the British Library, printed books, manuscripts, maps, music, sound recordings and all the other existing materials in the collection will always retain their central importance, and we are committed to continuing to provide, and to improve, access to these in our reading rooms. The importance of digital materials will, however, increase. We recognize that network infrastructure is at present most strongly developed in the higher education sector, but there are signs that similar facilities will also be available elsewhere, particularly in the industrial and commercial sector, and for public libraries. Our vision of network access encompasses all these."

An extensive Digital Library Program was expected to begin in 1999. As explained by Brian Lang: "The development of the Digital Library will enable the British Library to embrace the digital information age. Digital technology will be used to preserve and extend the Library's unparalleled collection. Access to the collection will become boundless with users from all over the world, at any time, having simple, fast access to digitized materials using computer networks, particularly the internet."

# Print book vs. digital book

Debates were fierce about the assets of the print book versus the digital book, and vice versa.

Roberto Hernandez Montoya, an editor of Venezuela Analitica, an electronic magazine offering a small digital library, wrote in September 1998: "The printed text can't be replaced, at least not for the foreseeable future. The paper book is a tremendous 'machine'. We can't leaf through an electronic book in the same way as a paper book. On the other hand, electronic use allows us to locate text chains more quickly. In a certain way we can more intensively read the electronic text, even with the inconvenience of reading on the screen. The electronic book is less expensive and can be more easily distributed worldwide (if we don't count the cost of the computer and the internet connection)."

In the February 1996 issue of the Swiss computer magazine "Informatique-Informations", Pierre Perroud, founder of the digital library Athena, explained that "electronic texts represent an encouragement to reading and a convivial participation to culture dissemination", particularly for textual research and text study. These texts are "a good complement to the print book, which remains irreplaceable when for 'true' reading. (...) The book remains a mysteriously holy companion with profound symbolism for us: we grip it in our hands, we hold it against us, 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."

1996 > TOWARDS A DIGITAL KNOWLEDGE

[Summary] The information available in books stays "static", whereas the information available on the internet is regularly updated, thus the need to change our relationship to knowledge. In 1996, more and more computers connected to the internet were available in schools and at home. Teachers began exploring new ways of teaching. Going from print culture to digital culture was changing the way both teachers and students were seeing teaching and learning. Print culture provided "stable" information whereas digital culture provided "moving" information, with information being regularly updated. During a conference organized by the International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP) in September 1996, Dale Spender, a professor and researcher, gave a lecture on "Creativity and the Computer Education Industry", with insightful comments on forthcoming trends.

***

The information available in books stays "static", whereas the information available on the internet is regularly updated, thus the need to change our relationship to knowledge.

In 1996, more and more computers connected to the internet were available in schools and at home. Teachers began exploring new ways of teaching. Going from print culture to digital culture was changing the way both teachers and students were seeing teaching and learning. Print culture provided "stable" information whereas digital culture provided "moving" information.

During a conference organized by the International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP) in September 1996, Dale Spender, a professor and researcher, gave a lecture on "Creativity and the Computer Education Industry", with insightful comments on forthcoming trends. Here are some excerpts:

"Throughout print culture, information has been contained in books -- and this has helped to shape our notion of information. For the information in books stays the same -- it endures. And this has encouraged us to think of information as stable -- as a body of knowledge which can be acquired, taught, passed on, memorized, and tested of course. The very nature of print itself has fostered a sense of truth; truth too is something which stays the same, which endures. And there is no doubt that this stability, this orderliness, has been a major contributor to the huge successes of the industrial age and the scientific revolution. (...)

But the digital revolution changes all this. Suddenly it is not the oldest information -- the longest lasting information that is the most reliable and useful. It is the very latest information that we now put the most faith in -- and which we will pay the most for. (...)

Education will be about participating in the production of the latest information. This is why education will have to be ongoing throughout life and work. Every day there will be something new that we will all have to learn. To keep up. To be in the know. To do our jobs. To be members of the digital community. And far from teaching a body of knowledge that will last for life, the new generation of information professionals will be required to search out, add to, critique, 'play with', and daily update information, and to make available the constant changes that are occurring."

Robert Beard, a professor at Bucknell University, in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, wrote in September 1998: "As a language teacher, the web represents a plethora of new resources produced by the target culture, new tools for delivering lessons (interactive Java and Shockwave exercises) and testing, which are available to students any time they have the time or interest -- 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It is also an almost limitless publication outlet for my colleagues and I, not to mention my institution. (...) Ultimately all course materials, including lecture notes, exercises, moot and credit testing, grading, and interactive exercises will be far more effective in conveying concepts that we have not even dreamed of yet."

Russon Wooldridge, a professor at the Department of French Studies, University of Toronto, Canada, wrote in February 2001: " My research, conducted once in an ivory tower, is now almost exclusively done through local or remote collaborations. (...) All my teaching makes the most of internet resources (web and email): the two common places for a course are the classroom and the website of the course, where I put all course materials. I have published all my research data of the last 20 years on the web (re-edition of books, articles, texts of old dictionaries as interactive databases, treaties from the 16th century, etc.). I publish proceedings of symposiums, I publish a journal, I collaborate with French colleagues by publishing online in Toronto what they can't publish online at home. In May 2000, I organized an international symposium in Toronto about French studies enhanced by new technologies. (...) I realize that without the internet I wouldn't have as many activities, or at least they would be very different from the ones I have today. So I don't see the future without them."

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) officially launched its OpenCourseWare (OCW) in September 2003 to put its course materials for free on the web, as a way to promote open dissemination of knowledge. In September 2002, a pilot version was available online with 32 course materials. 500 course materials were available in March 2004, 1,400 course materials in May 2006, and all 1,800 course materials in November 2007, regularly updated then, with some of them translated into Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese with the help of other organizations. MIT also launched the OpenCourseWare Consortium (OCW Consortium) in November 2005, as a common project for educational institutions that were willing to offer free online course materials, with the course materials of 100 universities worldwide one year later.

1996 > THE @FOLIO PROJECT, A MOBILE DEVICE FOR TEXTS

[Summary] The @folio project is a mobile device for texts designed as early as October 1996 by Pierre Schweitzer, an architect-designer living in Strasbourg, France. It is meant to download and read any text and/or illustrations from the web or hard disk, in any format, with no proprietary format and no DRM. The technology of @folio was novel and simple. It is inspired from fax and tab file folders. The flash memory is "printed" like Gutenberg printed his books. The facsimile mode is readable as is for any content, from sheet music to mathematical or chemical formulas, with no conversion necessary, whether it is handwritten text, calligraphy, free hand drawing or non-alphabetical writing. An international patent was filed in April 2001. The French start-up iCodex was created in July 2002 to develop and promote the @folio project.

***

The @folio project is a mobile device for texts designed as early as October 1996 by Pierre Schweitzer, an architect-designer living in Strasbourg, France.

It is meant to download and read any text and/or illustrations from the web or hard disk, in any format, with no proprietary format and no DRM.

The technology of @folio was novel and simple. It is inspired from fax and tab file folders. The flash memory is "printed" like Gutenberg printed his books. The facsimile mode is readable as is for any content, from sheet music to mathematical or chemical formulas, with no conversion necessary, whether it is handwritten text, calligraphy, free hand drawing or non-alphabetical writing. All this is difficult if not impossible on a computer or ebook reader (in the late 1990s and early 2000s).

The screen of the lightweight prototype takes 80% of the total surface and has low power consumption. It is surrounded by a translucent and flexible frame that folds to protect the screen when not in use. @folio could be sold for US $100 for the basic standard version, with various combinations of screen sizes and flash memory to fit different needs.