2000 > A STANDARD FORMAT FOR EBOOKS
[Summary] With so many formats showing up in 1998-2001 for new electronic devices, the digital publishing industry felt the need to work on a standard for ebooks. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the U.S. launched the Open eBook Initiative in June 1998, with a 25-people task force named Open eBook Authoring Group. In September 1999 was released the first version of the Open eBook (OeB) format, based on XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and defined by the Open eBook Publication Structure (OeBPS), with a free version belonging to public domain and a full version to be used with or without DRM by the publishing industry. The Open eBook Forum (OeBF) was created in January 2000 to develop the OeB format and OeBPS specifications. Since 2000, most ebook formats have derived from the OeB format, for example the PRC format from Mobipocket and the LIT format from Microsoft.
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With so many formats showing up in 1998-2001 for new electronic devices, the digital publishing industry felt the need to work on a standard for ebooks.
On top of the “classical” formats — TXT (text), DOC (Microsoft Word), HTML (HyperText Markup Language), XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and PDF (Portable Document Format) — other formats were the Glassbook Reader, the Peanut Reader, the Rocket eBook Reader (for the Rocket eBook), the Franklin Reader (for the eBookMan), the Cytale software (for the Cybook 1st generation), the Gemstar eBook Reader (for the Gemstar eBook) and the Palm Reader (for the Palm Pilot). Some formats were meant for a given device, either a PDA or an ebook reader, and couldn’t be used on other devices.
# Open eBook (OeB)
The National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST) in the U.S. launched the Open eBook Initiative in June 1998, with a 25-people task force named Open eBook Authoring Group. In September 1999 was released the first version of the Open eBook (OeB) format, based on XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and defined by the Open eBook Publication Structure (OeBPS), with a free version belonging to public domain and a full version to be used with or without DRM by the publishing industry.
The Open eBook Forum (OeBF) was created in January 2000 as an industrial consortium (with 85 participants in 2002) to develop the OeB format and OeBPS specifications. Since 2000, most ebook formats have derived from the OeB format, for example LIT from Microsoft and PRC format from Mobipocket.
# LIT from Microsoft
Microsoft launched its own PDA, the Pocket PC, in April 2000, with the Microsoft Reader, for people to read books in LIT (from "literature") format, a format based on the OeB format. The Microsoft Reader was also available for computers in August 2000, and then for any Windows platform, including for the new Tablets PC launched in November 2002.
Microsoft was billing publishers and distributors for the use of its DRM technology through the Microsoft Digital Asset Server (DAS), with a commission on each sale. Microsoft partnered with Barnes & Noble.com in January 2000 and Amazon.com in August 2000, for them to offer ebooks for the Microsoft Reader in their eBookStores soon to be launched. Barnes & Noble.com opened its eBookStore in August 2000, followed by Amazon in November 2000.
Pocket PC’s first OS, Windows CE, was replaced in October 2001 by Pocket PC 2002 to handle the reading of copyrighted books. In 2002, people could read books on three software: Microsoft Reader of course, Mobipocket Reader and Palm Reader, the software of the Palm Pilot, launched in March 1996 as the first PDA of the market.
# PRC from Mobipocket
Mobipocket was founded in March 2000 in Paris, France, by ThierryBrethes and Nathalie Ting, as a company specializing in ebooks forPDAs, with part of the funding coming from Viventures, a branch of theFrench multinational Vivendi.
The Mobipocket format (PRC, based on the OeB format) and the Mobipocket Reader could be used on any PDA, and also on any computer from April 2002.
In October 2001, the Mobipocket Reader received the eBook Technology Award from the International Book Fair in Frankfurt, Germany. Mobipocket partnered with Franklin for the Mobipocket Reader to be available on the eBookMan along with the Franklin Reader, instead of the initially planned Microsoft Reader.
The Mobipocket Web Companion was a software (for a fee) for extracting content from partner news sites. The Mobipocket Publisher was used by individuals (free version for private use, and standard version for a fee) or publishers (professional version for a fee) to create ebooks using the Mobipocket DRM technology for controlling access to copyrighted ebooks. The Mobipocket Publisher could also create ebooks in LIT format for the Microsoft Reader.
In spring 2003, the Mobipocket Reader was available in five languages (French, English, German, Spanish, Italian) and could be used on any PDA, computer and smartphone. 6,000 titles in several languages were available on the website of Mobipocket and in online partner bookstores. Mobipocket was bought by Amazon in April 2005.
# EPUB, a new standard
In April 2005, the Open eBook Forum was replaced with the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), et OeB was replaced with EPUB, an acronym for «electronic publication». EPUB allowed the reflowing of text depending on the size of the screen. Recent PDF files (PDF being another standard for ebooks) have been compatible with EPUB.
2000 > EXPERIMENTS BY BEST-SELLING AUTHORS
[Summary] In July 2000 began the electronic self-publishing of “The Plant”, an epistolary novel by Stephen King, who was the first best-selling author to launch such an experiment. The author began publishing “The Plant” in episodes on his own website. The chapters were available at regular intervals and could be downloaded in several formats (PDF, OeB, HTML, TXT). After the publication of the sixth chapter in December 2000, the author decided to stop the experiment, because more and more readers were downloading the chapters without paying for them. Stephen King went on with digital experiments though, but in partnership with his publisher. Digital experiments were also made in Europe in November 2000, by Frederick Forsyth, the British master of thrillers, whose latest short novels were published online by Online Originals, and by Arturo Pérez-Reverte, a best-selling Spanish author, whose latest novel was available online during one month before being available in print. In Brazil, Paolo Coehlo began offering free PDF versions of his novels in early 2003.
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In 2000, Stephen King was the first best-selling author to launchdigital experiments, followed by Frederick Forsyth and Arturo Pérez-Reverte in Europe and many other then, for example Paolo Coehlo inBrazil.
# Stephen King
As a first step, Stephen King distributed in March 2000 his short story “Riding the Bullet” as an electronic file, with 400,000 downloads during the first 24 hours in the digital bookstores that were selling it.
In the wake of the media attention that followed, Stephen King launched its own website in July 2000 to self-publish his epistolary novel “The Plant” in episodes. The chapters were available at regular intervals and could be downloaded in several formats (PDF, OeB, HTML, TXT). After the publication of the sixth chapter in December 2000, the author decided to stop the experiment, because more and more readers were downloading the chapters without paying for them.
Stephen King went on with digital experiments though, but in partnership with his publisher. In March 2001, his novel “Dreamcatcher” was the first to be launched both in print by Simon & Schuster and as an ebook in Palm Digital Media, Palm’s digital bookstore. In March 2002, his collection of short stories “Everything’s Eventual” was launched in print by Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, and as an ebook in Palm Digital Media, with an excerpt that could be freely downloaded.
# Frederick Forsyth
In November 2000, Frederick Forsyth, known as the British master of thrillers, launched a digital experiment in partnership with Online Originals, an electronic publisher from London. Online Originals published “The Veteran” as the first part of “Quintet”, a collection of five short stories announced in the following order: “The Veteran”, “The Miracle”, “The Citizen”, “The Art of the Matter” and “Draco”. Available in three formats to be read on Acrobat Reader, Microsoft Reader and Glassbook Reader, the short story was sold for 3.99 pounds (6.60 euros) on the publisher's website, as in several online bookstores in the United Kingdom (Alphabetstreet, BOL.com, WHSmith) and in the United States (Barnes & Noble, Contentville, Glassbook). This experiment didn’t last very long, because sales were far below expectations.
# Arturo Pérez-Reverte
Arturo Pérez-Reverte, a Spanish novelist, became famous with his series of novels about the adventures of Capitan Alatriste in the 17th century. The new title to be released in late 2000 was "El Oro del Rey" (The King's Gold). In November 2000, the author partnered with his publisher Alfaguara to publish the novel in digital form for one month, as a PDF that could be downloaded from a webpage set up for the occasion on the portal Inicia, before the release of the print version in bookstores. The novel was available in PDF for 2.90 euros, a much cheaper price than the 15.10 euros of the forthcoming print book. One month later, there were 332,000 downloads, but only 12,000 readers who paid for it. Most readers shared the password with their family and friends, for them to download the book for free. If the digital experiment was not good financially, it was very good as a novel marketing campaign to launch the print book.
# Paulo Coelho
Online experiments were launched by a number of authors then, for example Paulo Coelho, a best-selling Brazilian novelist who came to be known worldwide as the author of “The Alchimist”. In early 2003, his books were translated into 56 languages, with 53 million copies sold in 155 countries. In March 2003, Paulo Coelho decided to distribute PDF versions of several novels for free in various languages, with the consent of his publishers, after his readers wrote him they had a hard time finding his books in some places and countries. He renewed the same experiment with other titles in spring 2011.
2000 > COTRES.NET, WORKS OF DIGITAL LITERATURE
[Summary] A writer and musician, Jean-Paul has offered beautiful hypermedia works on his website cotres.net since October 1998, while searching how hyperlinks could expand his writing towards new directions. He wrote in June 2000: "Surfing the web is like radiating in all directions (I am interested in something and I click on all the links on a home page) or like jumping around (from one click to another, as the links appear). You can do this in the written media, of course. But the difference is striking. So the internet changed how I write. You don't write the same way for a website as you do for a script or a play. (…) Since then I write directly on the screen: I use the print medium only occasionally (…): [in it] the text is developing page after page (most of the time), whereas the technique of links allows another relationship to the time and space of imagination. And, for me, it is above all the opportunity to put into practice this reading/writing 'cycle', whereas leafing through a book gives only an idea — which is vague because the book is not conceived for that."
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A writer and musician, Jean-Paul has offered beautiful works of digital literature, while searching how hyperlinks could expand his writing towards new directions.
In October 1998, he switched from being a print author to being an hypermedia author, and created cotres.net (“cotres” could be translated by “cutters” in English) as a website "telling stories in 3D", either French-language stories or plurilingual stories.
Jean-Paul also enjoyed the freedom of online self-publishing. He explained in June 2000: "The internet allows me to do without intermediaries, such as record companies, publishers and distributors. Most of all, it allows me to crystallize what I have in my head: the print medium (desktop publishing, in fact) only allows me to partly do that. (…) Surfing the web is like radiating in all directions (I am interested in something and I click on all the links on a home page) or like jumping around (from one click to another, as the links appear). You can do this in the written media, of course. But the difference is striking. So the internet changed how I write. You don't write the same way for a website as you do for a script or a play. (…)
In fact, it is not the internet which changed how I write, it is the first Mac that I discovered through the self-learning of HyperCard. I still remember how astonished I was during the month when I was learning about buttons, links, surfing by analogies, objects or images. The idea that a simple click on one area of the screen allowed me to open a range of piles of cards, and each card could offer new buttons and each button opened on to a new range, etc. In brief, the learning of everything on the web that today seems really banal, for me it was a revelation (it seems Steve Jobs and his team had the same shock when they discovered the ancestor of the Mac in the laboratories of Rank Xerox).
Since then I write directly on the screen: I use the print medium only occasionally, to fix up a text, or to give somebody who is allergic to the screen a kind of photograph, something instantaneous, something approximate. It is only an approximation, because print forces us to have a linear relationship: the text is developing page after page (most of the time), whereas the technique of links allows another relationship to the time and space of imagination. And, for me, it is above all the opportunity to put into practice this reading/writing 'cycle', whereas leafing through a book gives only an idea — which is vague because the book is not conceived for that."
Jean-Paul insisted on the growing interaction between digital literature and technology: "The future of cyber-literature, techno- literature, digital literature or whatever you want to call it, is set by the technology itself. It is now impossible for an author to handle all by himself the words and their movement and sound. A decade ago, you could know well each of Director, Photoshop or Cubase (to cite just the better known software), using the first version of each. That is not possible any more. Now we have to know how to delegate, find more solid financial partners than Gallimard [a major French publisher], and look in the direction of Hachette-Matra, Warner, and Hollywood. At best, the status of multimedia director (?) will be the one of video director, film director, manager of the product. He is the one who receives the golden palms at Cannes, but who would never have been able to earn them just on his own. As twin sister (not a clone) of the cinematograph, cyber-literature (video + the link) will be an industry, with a few isolated craftsmen on the outer edge (and therefore with below-zero copyright)."
“Canon laser”, one of Jean-Paul’s literary works, was first published as a print work using the first ODP software allowing artists to easily play with the form of letters (as characters). As a follow-up, a plurilingual hypermedia version was published on cotres.net in 2002.
In July 2011, the home page of cotres.net has given access to three literary works taking inspiration from both Paris and the whole planet.
“Solstice” (2008), a universal greetings card, is round instead of rectangular, to celebrate soft round forms versus hurtful rectangular forms.
“Agression93” (2009) is a short story about a minor attack in the suburbs, that can be read in four minutes when only using hyperlinks on the bottom right of the screen to fifteen minutes when searching hyperlinks with the mouse and clicking on some of them.
“Aux Jardins de Picpus” (2010) is a guided visit of the small gardens of Picpus in Paris.
2000 > THE ORIGINAL GUTENBERG BIBLE ONLINE
[Summary] As a sign of the times, with the ebook being nearly 30 years old, a digitized version of the original Gutenberg Bible was available online in November 2000 on the website of the British Library. Gutenberg printed its Bible in 1454 in Mainz, Germany, perhaps printing 180 copies, with 48 copies still available in 2000, and two full copies at the British Library. As they were a little different, both were digitized in March 2000 by Japanese experts from Keio University of Tokyo and NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Communications). The images were then processed to offer a full digitized version on the web a few months later, for the world to enjoy.
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As a sign of the times, with the ebook being nearly 30 years old, a digitized version of the original Gutenberg Bible was available online in November 2000 on the website of the British Library.
# The Gutenberg Bible
In 2000, the digital book was nearly 30 years old. It was born in July 1971 with eText #1 of Project Gutenberg.
The print book was five centuries and a half old. Gutenberg printed its Bible in 1454 in Mainz, Germany, perhaps printing 180 copies, with 48 copies still available in 2000, and two full copies at the British Library. As they were a little different, both were digitized in March 2000 by Japanese experts from Keio University of Tokyo and NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Communications). The images were then processed to offer a full digitized version on the web a few months later, for the world to enjoy.
# The ebook in late 2000
In late 2000, thousands of public domain works were freely available on the web in digital libraries.
A number of bookstores and publishers had their own websites. Some of them were born online, with all their transactions made through the internet.
Alongside their traditional tasks of lending books or other documents, and offering a collection of reference works, librarians helped their patrons to navigate the web without being drowned, organized a selection of websites for them, and created their own websites with an online catalog and a digital library.
More and more books and periodicals were “only” digital, skipping the cost of a print version. From “static” in print books, information become “fluid” on the internet, and regularly updated.
Many authors were using the internet to seek information, disseminate their work, exchange with their readers and collaborate with other creators.
Some authors began searching how using hyperlinks could expand their writing towards new directions, creating hypermedia novels and sites of hyperfiction, while mixing text, image and sound.
Academic and scientific publishers began to reorganize their work and favor online publishing, with prints versions only on demand. Some universities made their own textbooks with a selection of chapters and articles from a database, as well as comments from professors.
The internet became mandatory to find information, communicate, access documents, and broaden our knowledge. People no longer needed to run after information. Information was there, by the numbers, available on our screen, often at no cost, including for those who studied in a remote place, lived in the countryside, worked at home or were stuck in a bed.
The web became a gigantic encyclopedia, a extensive library, a huge bookstore and a full medium on its own.
Some people even read a book on the screen of a computer, a PDA or a (still very expensive) ebook reader.
2001 > BROADBAND BECAME THE NORM
[Summary] Henk Slettenhaar has extensive knowledge of communication technology, with a long career in Geneva, Switzerland, and California. In 1992, he founded the Swiss Silicon Valley Association (SVA) and, since then, has been taking study groups to Silicon Valley, San Francisco and other high-tech areas. Henk wrote in July 2001: “I am experiencing a tremendous change with having a ‘broadband’ connection at home. To be connected at all times is so completelely different from dial-up. I now receive email as soon as it arrives, I can listen to my favorite radio stations wherever they are. I can listen to the news when I want to. Get the music I like all the time. (…) The only thing which is missing is good quality real time video. The bandwidth is too low for that.” Ten years later, Henk has watched real time video, and read ebooks in the Kindle and the iPad.
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Henk Slettenhaar has extensive knowledge of communication technology, with a long career in Geneva, Switzerland, and California. Ten years after getting a broadband connection at gome, he reads ebooks on a Kindle or an iPad.
Henk joined CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Geneva in 1958 to work with the first digital computer. He was involved in the development of CERN's first digital networks.
His U.S. experience began in 1966 when he joined a team at SLAC (Stanford Linear Accelerator Center) for 18 months to build a film digitizer. Returning to SLAC in 1983, he designed a digital monitoring system, which was used for more than ten years.
For 25 years he tought information technology at Webster University, Geneva. He is the former head of the Telecom Management Program created in fall 2000. He also worked as a consultant for a number of international organizations.
# In 1992
In 1992, with an extensive experience in Switzerland and California, Henk founded the Swiss Silicon Valley Association (SVA) and, since then, has been taking study groups to Silicon Valley, San Francisco and other high-tech areas like Los Angeles, Finland and China. These study tours include visits to outstanding companies, start-up, research centers and universities, with the aim of exploring new developments in information technology such as the internet, multimedia and telecommunications. Participants have the opportunity to learn about state-of-the-art research and development, strategies and business ventures through presentations and discussions, product demonstrations and site tours.
# In 1998
Henk wrote in December 1998: “I can't imagine my professional life without the internet. Most of my communication is now via email. I have been using email for the last 20 years, most of that time to keep in touch with colleagues in a very narrow field. Since the explosion of the internet, and especially the invention of the web, I communicate mainly by email. Most of my presentations are now on the web and the courses I teach are all web-extended. All the details of my Silicon Valley tours are on the web. Without the internet we wouldn't be able to function. And I use the internet as a giant database. I can find information today with the click of a mouse.”
# In 2000
The year 2000 was marked by “the explosion of mobile technology. The mobile phone has become for many people, including me, the personal communicator which allows you to be anywhere anytime and still be reachable. But the mobile internet is still a dream. The new services on mobile (GSM) phones are extremely primitive and expensive (WAP = Wait and Pay).”
# In 2001
What has happened since one year? Henk wrote in July 2001: “I am experiencing a tremendous change with having a ‘broadband’ connection at home. To be connected at all times is so completelely different from dial-up. I now receive email as soon as it arrives, I can listen to my favorite radio stations wherever they are. I can listen to the news when I want to. Get the music I like all the time. (…) The only thing which is missing is good quality real time video. The bandwidth is too low for that.
I now have a wired and a wireless LAN [Local Area Network] in my home. I can use my laptop anywhere in the house and outside, even at the neighbors and still being connected. With the same technology I am now able to use my wireless LAN card in my computer when I travel. For instance, during my recent visit to Stockholm, there was connectivity in the hotel, the conference center, the airport and even in the Irish pub!
# In 2011
Ten years later, in June 2011, Henk explained: “I have always followed the development of ebooks with much interest, as a professor in communication systems and an organizer of study tours in Silicon Valley. I didn’t use them much during 40 years, because of the lack of progress in reading devices. I never liked reading a book on a computer or PDA. Now, with tablets like the Kindle of the iPad, I am finally reading ebooks. I see a huge expansion of digital reading with tablets that are easy to use and with a very large choice of ebooks thanks to electronic commerce and companies like Amazon.”
What has he been working on lately? “I am a serial entrepreneur who is creating a start-up in the field of mobility. I use the internet all the time to find partners and ideas. We also use online books to learn the art of innovation!”
2001 > WIKIPEDIA, A COLLABORATIVE ENCYCLOPEDIA
[Summary] Wikipedia was launched in January 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger (Larry resigned later on) as a global free collaborative online encyclopedia, financed by donations, with no advertising. Its website is a wiki, which means that anyone can write, edit, correct and improve information throughout the encyclopedia, with people contributing under a pseudonym. The articles stay the property of their authors, and can be freely used according to Creative Commons or GFDL (GNU Free Documentation License). Wikipedia quickly became the largest reference website. It was in the top ten websites in December 2006, and in the top five websites in 2008. In May 2007, Wikipedia had 7 million articles in 192 languages, including 1.8 million articles in English, 589,000 articles in German, 500,000 articles in French, 260,000 articles in Portuguese, and 236,000 articles in Spanish. Wikipedia celebrated its tenth anniversary in January 2011 with 17 million articles in 270 languages et 400 million individual visits per month for all websites.
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Wikipedia was launched in January 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger (Larry resigned later on) as a global free collaborative online encyclopedia.
Wikipedia was financed by donations, with no advertising. Its website is a wiki, which means that anyone can write, edit, correct and improve information throughout the encyclopedia, with people contributing under a pseudonym. The articles stay the property of their authors, and can be freely used according to Creative Commons or GFDL (GNU Free Documentation License).
Wikipedia is hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, founded in June 2003, which has run a number of other projects, beginning with Wiktionary (launched in December 2002) and Wikibooks (launched in June 2003), followed by Wikiquote, Wikisource (texts from public domain), Wikimedia Commons (multimedia), Wikispecies (animals and plants), Wikinews and Wikiversity (textbooks).
Wikipedia quickly became the largest reference website, with thousands of people contributing worldwide. In December 2004, Wikipedia had 1.3 million articles by 13,000 contributors in 100 languages. In December 2006, Wikipedia was among the top ten sites on the web, with 6 million articles. In May 2007, Wikipedia had 7 million articles in 192 languages, including 1.8 million articles in English, 589,000 articles in German, 500,000 articles in French, 260,000 articles in Portuguese, and 236,000 articles in Spanish. In 2008, Wikipedia was in the top five websites. In September 2010, Wikipedia had 14 million articles in 272 languages, including 3.4 million articles in English, 1.1 million articles in German and 1 million articles in French. Wikipedia celebrated its tenth anniversary in January 2011 with 17 million articles in 270 languages et 400 million individual visits per month for all websites.
Wikipedia also inspired many other projects over the years, for example Citizendium, launched in 2007 as a pilot project to build a new encyclopedia.
Citizendium, an acronym for “The Citizen’s Compendium”, was launched in March 2007 at the initiative of Larry Sanger, who co-founded Wikipedia with Jimmy Wales in January 2001, but resigned later on over policy and content quality issues, as well as the use of anonymous pseudonyms.
Citizendium is a wiki project open to public collaboration, but combining "public participation with gentle expert guidance". The project is experts-led, not experts-only. Contributors use their own names, and they are guided by expert editors. As explained by Larry in his essay "Toward a New Compendium of Knowledge", posted in September 2006 and updated in March 2007: "Editors will be able to make content decisions in their areas of specialization, but otherwise working shoulder-to-shoulder with ordinary authors." There are also constables who make sure the rules are respected.
There were 1,100 high-quality articles, 820 authors, and 180 editors in March 2007, 11,800 articles in August 2009, and 15,000 articles in September 2010. Citizendium wants to act as a prototype for upcoming large scale knowledge-building projects that would deliver reliable reference, scholarly and educational content.
2001 > THE CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSE
[Summary] Long after copyleft, a term invented in 1984 by Richard Stallmann, a computer scientist at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Creative Commons (CC) was founded in 2001 by Lawrence "Larry" Lessig, a professor at Stanford Law School, California. As explained on its website in 2009: "Creative Commons is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright. We provide free licenses and other legal tools to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof." Who has used Creative Commons? O’Reilly Media for example, as well as Wikipedia and the Public Library of Science (PLoS). There were one million Creative Commons licensed works in 2003, 4.7 million works in 2004, 20 million works in 2005, 50 million works in 2006, 90 million works in 2007, 130 million works in 2008, and 350 million works in April 2010.
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The web allowed people to distribute their works globally, thus the need for a Creative Commons license, created in 2001 to make it “easier for people to share and build upon the work of others”. Copyleft showed the way as early as 1984.
# Copyleft
The term "copyleft" was invented in 1984 by Richard Stallman, a computer scientist at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). As explained on the GNU Project’s website: "Copyleft is a general method for making a program or other work free, and requiring all modified and extended versions of the program to be free as well. (…) Copyleft says that anyone who redistributes the software, with or without changes, must pass along the freedom to further copy and change it. Copyleft guarantees that every user has freedom. (…) Copyleft is a way of using the copyright on the program. It doesn't mean abandoning the copyright; in fact, doing so would make copyleft impossible. The word 'left' in 'copyleft' is not a reference to the verb 'to leave' — only to the direction which is the inverse of 'right'. (…) The GNU Free Documentation License (FDL) is a form of copyleft intended for use on a manual, textbook or other document to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifications, either commercially or non commercially."
# Creative Commons
Creative Commons (CC) was founded in 2001 by Lawrence “Larry” Lessing, a professor at Stanford Law School, California. As explained on its website: "Creative Commons is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright. We provide free licenses and other legal tools to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof."
# How has used Creative Commons?
O’Reilly Media, founded by Tim o’Reilly in 1978 to publish computer and high-tech books, began using the Creative Commons Founders’ Copyright in 2003.
Launched in 2001 as a free online collaborative encyclopedia, Wikipedia has offered articles that stay the property of their authors, and can be freely used according to Creative Commons or GFDL (GNU Free Documentation License).
The Public Library of Science (PLoS) has used a Creative Commons license for the articles of its free online scientific and medical journals launched in 2003. The articles can be freely redistributed and reused, including for translations, as long as the author(s) and source are cited.
There were one million Creative Commons licensed works in 2003, 4.7 million works in 2004, 20 million works in 2005, 50 million works in 2006, 90 million works in 2007, 130 million works in 2008, and 350 million works in April 2010.
2003 > HANDICAPZÉRO, THE INTERNET FOR EVERYONE
[Summary] An important issue is the need for information to be accessible to all. Available online in September 2000, the website Handicapzéro became a portal in February 2003 to offer an adapted access to information for the French-speaking users having a visual problem, i.e. over 10% of the population. Blind users can access the site using a Braille device or a speech software. Visually impaired users can set up their own parameters (size and type of fonts, color of background, etc.) to surf the web in an optimal way, by creating and modifying their own visual profile. Any user can correspond in Braille with blind users through the website. 2 million visitors used the services of the portal in 2006. Handicapzero intends to demonstrate “that, with the respect of some basic rules, the internet can finally become a space of freedom for all.”
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An important issue is the need for information to be accessible to all, as shown by the portal Handicapzéro launched in February 2003 for any French-speaking user having a visual problem.
A first website was launched in September 2000 to provide an adapted access to information for blind or visually impaired users, i.e. over 10% of the population. It quickly became the most visited adapted site in France, with 10,000 visits per month.
In February 2003, Handicapzéro launched a portal providing free access to national and international news in real time (in partnership with Agence France-Presse), sports news (with the newspaper L’ Équipe), TV programs (with the magazine Télérama), weather (with the service Météo France) and a search engine (with Google), as well as a range of services for health, employment, consumer goods, leisure, sports and telephony.
Blind users can access the site using a Braille device or a speech software. Visually impaired users can set up their own parameters (size and type of fonts, color of background, etc.) to surf the web in an optimal way, by creating and modifying their own visual profile. This profile can be used for any text available on the web, by copying and pasting the text on the web interface. Any user can correspond in Braille with blind users through the website. Handicapzéro provides a free transcription of the letters and prints them in Braille, before sending them by mail for free in Europe.
2 million visitors used the services of the portal in 2006. Handicapzéro intends to demonstrate “that, with the respect of some basic rules, the internet can finally become a space of freedom for all.”
Things are not as simple for an adapted access to books. Patrice Cailleaud, director of communication for Handicapzéro, explained in January 2001 that, if the digital book is “a new complementary solution to the problems experienced by blind and visually impaired users, (…) there are still issues with the copyright legislation and with permissions from authors that prevent us to offer Braille versions or large print versions. The requests for permissions are scarce and long, and seldom work.”
Thus the need for national laws in the wake of an international copyright law for visually impaired users. In the European Union, the directive 2001/29/EC dated May 2001 on “the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society” insists in its article 43 on the need for all member states to adopt measures favoring access to books for the handicapped users that can’t use standard books, especially by promoting accessible formats. Ten years later, there is still a lot to do.
2003 > THE PUBLIC LIBRARY OF SCIENCE
[Summary] The Public Library of Science (PLoS) was founded in October 2000 in California as a non-profit organization whose mission was to give access to the world's scientific and medical literature. In early 2003, PLoS created a non-profit scientific and medical publishing venture to provide scientists and physicians with free high-quality, high-profile online journals in which to publish their work. The journals were PLoS Biology (launched in 2003), PLoS Medicine (2004), PLoS Genetics (2005), PLoS Computational Biology (2005), PLoS Pathogens (2005), PLoS Clinical Trials (2006), and PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases (2007), the first scientific journal on this topic. All PLoS articles are freely available online, on the websites of PLoS and in the public archive PubMed Central, run by the National Library of Medicine. The articles can be freely redistributed and reused under a Creative Commons license, including for translations, as long as the author(s) and source are cited.
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Founded in October 2000, the Public Library of Science (PLoS) created a non-profit scientific and medical publishing venture in early 2003, to provide scientists and physicians with free high-quality, high-profile online journals in which to publish their work.
# PLoS as a catalyst
With the internet being a powerful medium to disseminate information, it seems quite outrageous that the results of research — original works requiring many years of efforts — are "squatted" by publishers claiming ownership on these works, and selling them at a high price. The work of researchers is often publicly funded, especially in North America. It would therefore seem appropriate that the scientific community and the general public can freely enjoy the results of this research. 1,000 new scientific and medical articles reviewed by peers were published daily in 2000, with few of them free available on the internet.
The Public Library of Science (PLoS) was founded in October 2000 in San Francisco, California, as a non-profit organization whose mission was to make the world’s scientific and medical literature a public resource in free online archives. Instead of information disseminated in millions of reports and thousands of online journals, a single point would give access to the full content of these articles, with a search engine and hyperlinks between articles.
PLoS posted an open letter requesting the articles presently published by journals to be distributed freely in online archives, and asking researchers to promote the publishers willing to support this project. From October 2000 to September 2002, the open letter was signed by 30,000 scientists from 180 countries. The publishers' answer was much less enthusiastic, although a number of publishers agreed for their articles to be distributed freely immediately after publication, or six months after publication. But even the publishers who initially agreed to support the project made so many objections that it was finally abandoned.
# PLoS as a publisher
Another objective of PLoS was to become a publisher while creating a new model of online publishing based on free dissemination of knowledge. In early 2003, PLoS created a non-profit scientific and medical publishing venture to provide scientists and physicians with free high-quality, high-profile journals in which to publish their work. The journals were PLoS Biology (launched in 2003), PLoS Medicine (2004), PLoS Genetics (2005), PLoS Computational Biology (2005), PLoS Pathogens (2005), PLoS Clinical Trials (2006) and PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases (2007), the first scientific journal on this topic.
All PLoS articles are freely available online, on the websites of PLoS and in the public archive PubMed Central, run by the National Library of Medicine. The articles can be freely redistributed and reused under a Creative Commons license, including for translations, as long as the author(s) and source are cited. PLoS also launched PLoS ONE, an online forum where people can publish articles on any subject relating to science or medicine.
Three years after they were created, PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine had the same reputation for excellence as the leading journals Nature, Science and The New England Journal of Medicine. PLoS received financial support from several foundations while developing a viable economic model from fees paid by published authors, advertising, sponsorship, and paid activities organized for PLoS members. PLoS also hopes to encourage other publishers to adopt the open access model, or to convert their existing journals to an open access model.
2004 > THE WEB 2.0, COMMUNITY AND SHARING
[Summary] The term "web 2.0" was invented in 2004 by Tim O'Reilly, a publisher of computer books, as a title for a series of conferences he was organizing. The web 2.0 has been based on community and sharing, with a wealth of websites whose content has been supplied by users, such as blogs, wikis, social networks and collaborative encyclopedias. Wikipedia, Facebook and Twitter, of course, but also tens of thousands of others. The web 2.0 may begin to fulfill the dream of Tim Berners- Lee, who invented the web in 1990, and wrote in an essay dated April 1998: "The dream behind the web is of a common information space in which we communicate by sharing information. Its universality is essential: the fact that a hypertext link can point to anything, be it personal, local or global, be it draft or highly polished. ("The World Wide Web: A very short personal history", available on his webpage on the W3C website)
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The term "web 2.0" was invented in 2004 by Tim O'Reilly, a publisher of computer books, as a title for a series of conferences he was organizing.
The web 2.0 was based on community and sharing, with a wealth of websites whose content was supplied by users, such as blogs, wikis, social networks and collaborative encyclopedias. Wikipedia, Facebook and Twitter, of course, but also tens of thousands of others.
The web 2.0 may begin to fulfill the dream of Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the web in 1990, and wrote in April 1998 in an essay: "The dream behind the web is of a common information space in which we communicate by sharing information. Its universality is essential: the fact that a hypertext link can point to anything, be it personal, local or global, be it draft or highly polished.” ("The World Wide Web: A very short personal history", available on his webpage on the W3C website)
The first blog was launched in 1997. A blog is an online diary kept by a person or a group, usually in reverse chronological order, and can be updated every minute or once a month. There were 14 million blogs worldwide in July 2005, with 80,000 new blogs per day. According to Technorati, the first blog search engine, there were 65 million blogs in December 2006, with 175,000 new blogs per day. Some blogs are devoted to photos (photoblogs), music (audioblogs or podcasts), and videos (vlogs or videoblogs).
The wiki concept became quite popular in 2000. Deriving from the Hawaiian term "wiki" ("fast"), a wiki is a website allowing multiple users to collaborate online on the same project. Users can contribute to drafting content, editing it, improving it, and updating it. The software can be simple or more elaborate. A simple program handles text and hyperlinks. With a more elaborate program, one can embed images, charts, tables, etc. The most famous wiki is Wikipedia.
Facebook was founded in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and his fellow students as a social network. Originally created for the students of Harvard University, it was then available to students from any university in the U.S. before being open to anyone worldwide in September 2006, to connect with relatives, friends and strangers. Facebook was the second most visited website after Google, with 500 million users in June 2010, while sparking debates on privacy issues.
Founded in 2006 by Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone, Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging tool to send free short messages of 140 characters maximum, called tweets, via the internet, IM or SMS. Sometimes described as the SMS of the internet, Twitter gained worldwide popularity, with 106 million users in April 2010, and 300,000 new users per day. As for tweets, there were 5,000 per day in 2007, 300,000 in 2008, 2.5 million in 2009, 50 million in January 2010, and 55 million in April 2010, with the archiving of public tweets by the Library of Congress as a reflection of the trends of our time.
We now try to fullfill the second part of Tim Berners-Lee’s dream, according to his essay dated April 1998: “There was a second part of the dream, too, dependent on the web being so generally used that it became a realistic mirror (or in fact the primary embodiment) of the ways in which we work and play and socialize. That was that once the state of our interactions was online, we could then use computers to help us analyze it, make sense of what we are doing, where we individually fit in, and how we can better work together."
2005 > FROM PDAS TO SMARTPHONES
[Summary] In April 2001, there were 17 million PDAs versus 100,000 ebook readers worldwide, according to a Seybold Report available online. The Palm Pilot was launched as the first PDA in March 1996, with 23 million Palm Pilots sold between 1996 and 2002. Palm stayed the leader — 36.8% of PDAs were Palm Pilots in 2002 — despite a fierce competition from Microsoft’s Pocket PC and the PDAs of Hewlett-Packard, Sony, Handspring, Toshiba and Casio. The main platforms were Palm OS (for 55% of PDAs) and Pocket PC (for 25,7% of PDAs). People reading on PDAs could read on Mobipocket Reader (available in March 2000), Microsoft Reader (April 2000), Palm Reader (March 2001), Acrobat Reader (May 2001 for Palm Pilot, and December 2001 for Pocket PC), and finally Adobe Reader (May 2003), that replaced Acrobat Reader to read both standard PDF files and secure PDF files of copyrighted books. PDAs were then replaced by smartphones, from the Nokia 9210 in 2001 to the iPhone in April 2007.
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In April 2001, there were 17 million PDAs versus 100,000 ebook readers worldwide, according to a Seybold Report available online. In 2005, PDAs were replaced with smartphones.
# The Palm Pilot
The Palm Pilot was launched as the first PDA in March 1996, with 23 million Palm Pilots sold between 1996 and 2002. In July 2002, the Palm Reader was also available for computers, and Palm Digital Media, Palm’s digital bookstore (later renamed Palm eBook Store), was offering 5,500 ebooks in several languages. 10,000 ebooks were available in 2003.
Some book professionals were worried about reading on such a small screen, whereas PDA users found that the screen size wasn't a problem at all to read a good book on a pocket-size multifunction device.
# The eBookMan
Franklin’s eBookMan was a handheld device to read books on the Franklin Reader, with standard PDA functions (calendar, voice recorder, etc.). In October 2000, the device received the eBook Technology Award at the International Book Fair in Frankfurt, Germany. Three models (EBM-900, EBM-901, EBM-911) were available in early 2001, with a RAM size of 8 or 16 MB, and a backlit or not LCD screen. The screen was large compared to other handheld devices, but only in black and white, unlike the Pocket PC and some Palm Pilots. People could also listen to audiobooks and MP3 music files. In October 2001, the eBookMan offered the Mobipocket Reader alongside the Franklin Reader, and the Franklin Reader was also available for the Pocket PC and for models from Psion, Palm and Nokia. Franklin developed a digital bookstore while partnering with other companies, for example with Audible.com to access its collection of 4,500 audiobooks.
# Other PDAs
Palm stayed the leader – 36.8% of PDAs were Palm Pilots in 2002 — despite a fierce competition from Microsoft’s Pocket PC and from the PDAs of Hewlett-Packard, Sony, Handspring, Toshiba and Casio. The main platforms were Palm OS (for 55% of PDAs) and Pocket PC (for 25,7% of PDAs).
People reading on their PDAs could use Mobipocket Reader (available since March 2000), Microsoft Reader (April 2000), Palm Reader (March 2001), Acrobat Reader (May 2001 for Palm Pilot, and December 2001 for Pocket PC), and finally Adobe Reader (May 2003) that replaced Acrobat Reader to read both standard PDF files and secure PDF files of copyrighted books.
Publishers began to digitize their books and sell digital versions online in various formats (LIT, PRC, PDF, OeB), on their own websites or in the digital bookstores of Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Palm, Mobipocket, Numilog, and the likes.
# Smartphones
In 2004, prices of PDAs began to drop, with the leaders still being Palm, Sony and Hewlett-Packard. People began buying smartphones instead of PDAs. The first smartphone was Nokia 9210, launched as early as 2001 with a Symbian platform , and followed by Nokia Series 60, Sony Ericsson P800, and the smartphones of Motorola and Siemens. Sony stopping selling PDAs in February 2005. 3,7% of cellphones sold in 2004 were smartphones. 9% of cellphones sold in 2006 were smartphones, with 90 million smartphones sold for one billion cell phones. Apple launched the iPhone in June 2007 in the U.S., in late 2007 in Europe and in 2008 in Asia.
Would people prefer reading on mobile handsets like the iPhone 3G (with its Stanza Reader) or the T-Mobile G1 (with Google's platform Android and its reader), or would they prefer using ebook readers? Was there a market for both smartphones and ebook readers? These were some of the fascinating issues discussed at the time.
2005 > FROM GOOGLE PRINT TO GOOGLE BOOKS
[Summary] Google launched Google Print in May 2005, followed by Google Books in August 2006, while struggling with associations of authors and publishers. The beta version of Google Print went live in May 2005, with: (a) a project aimed at publishers, launched in October 2004; and (b) a project intended for libraries, launched in December 2004. Three months later, Google Print was stopped until further notice because of lawsuits filed by associations of authors and publishers for copyright infringement. The program resumed in August 2006 under the new name of Google Books. Google Books started offering books digitized in the participating libraries (Harvard, Stanford, Michigan, Oxford, California, Virginia, Wisconsin-Madison, Complutense of Madrid, and New York Public Library), with either the full text for public domain books or excerpts for copyrighted books. Other libraries joined then. Google also tried to settle a lawsuit with associations of authors and publishers in October 2008. A agreement has not be reached yet (as of July 2011).
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Google launched Google Print in May 2005, followed by Google Books in August 2006, while struggling with associations of authors and publishers.
The beta version of Google Print went live in May 2005, after two earlier steps. In October 2004, Google launched the first part of Google Print as a project aimed at publishers, for internet users to be able to see excerpts of books and order them online. In December 2004, Google launched the second part of Google Print as a project intended for libraries, to build up a digital library of 15 million books by digitizing the collections of major partner libraries, beginning with the libraries of the Universities of Michigan (7 million books), Harvard, Stanford and Oxford, and the New York Public Library. The planned cost in 2004 was an average of US $10 per book, and a total budget of $150 to $200 million for ten years. Three months later, Google Print was stopped until further notice because of lawsuits filed by associations of authors and publishers for copyright infringement.
The program resumed in August 2006 under the new name of Google Books. The participating libraries now also included the libraries of the Universities of California, Virginia, and Wisconsin-Madison, and the Complutense of Madrid. Google Books provided a full text for public domain books, and excerpts for copyrighted books. According to some media buzz, Google was scanning 3,000 books a day.
After three years of conflict, Google reached a settlement in October 2008 with associations of authors and publishers, with an agreement to be signed during the next years. The inclusion of copyrighted works in Google Books had been widely criticized by authors and publishers worldwide. In the U.S., lawsuits were filed by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers (AAP) for alleged copyright infringement. The assumption was that the full scanning and digitizing of copyrighted books infringed copyright laws, even if only snippets were made freely available, whereas Google thought this was "fair use", referring to short excerpts from copyrighted books that could be lawfully quoted in another book or website, as long as the source (author, title, publisher) was mentioned.
As of December 2008, Google had 24 library partners, including a Swissone (University Library of Lausanne), a French one (Lyon MunicipalLibrary), a Belgian one (Ghent University Library), a German one(Bavarian State Library), two Spanish ones (National Library ofCatalonia, and University Complutense of Madrid), and a Japanese one(Keio University Library). The U.S. partner libraries were, peralphabetical order: Columbia University, Committee on InstitutionalCooperation (CIC), Cornell University Library, Harvard University, NewYork Public Library, Oxford University, Princeton University, StanfordUniversity, University of California, University of Michigan,University of Texas at Austin, University of Virginia, and Universityof Wisconsin-Madison.
2005 > THE OPEN CONTENT ALLIANCE, A UNIVERSAL LIBRARY
[Summary] Starting with an idea from the Internet Archive, the Open Content Alliance (OCA) was launched in October 2005 as a global effort from a group of cultural, technology, non profit, and governmental organizations to build “a digital archive of global content for universal access” and offer a permanent repository of multilingual text and multimedia content. The first 100,000 ebooks were available in the Internet Archive in December 2006, with 12,000 new ebooks posted per month. Unlike Google Books, OCA books are searchable and downloadable through any web search engine, and don’t include copyrighted books, unless the copyright holder has expressly given permission. The first contributors to OCA were the University of California, the University of Toronto, the European Archive, the National Archives in United Kingdom, O'Reilly Media, and the Prelinger Archives. One million ebooks were available in the Internet Archive in December 2008, and two million ebooks in March 2010.
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Starting with an idea from the Internet Archive, the Open Content Alliance (OCA) was launched in October 2005 as a effort to build “a digital archive of global content for universal access”.
The goal was to offer a permanent repository of multilingual text and multimedia content. The first 100,000 ebooks were available in the Internet Archive in December 2006, with 12,000 new ebooks posted per month.
What exactly is the Internet Archive? Founded in April 1996 by Brewster Kahle in San Francisco, California, the Internet Archive is a non- profit organization that has built an "internet library" to offer permanent access to historical collections in digital format for researchers, historians and scholars. An archive of the web has been stored every two months or so since 1996, and has been freely available through the Wayback Machine since October 2001. As "a nonprofit digital library dedicated to providing universal access to human knowledge", the Internet Archive has also become a digital library of text, audio, software, image and video content.
As explained in 2007 on the OCA website, OCA "is a collaborative effort of a group of cultural, technology, nonprofit, and governmental organizations from around the world that helps build a permanent archive of multilingual digitized text and multimedia material. An archive of contributed material is available on the Internet Archive website and through Yahoo! and other search engines and sites. The OCA encourages access to and reuse of collections in the archive, while respecting the content owners and contributors."
Unlike Google Books, OCA books are searchable and downloadable through any web search engine, and don’t include copyrighted books, unless the copyright holder has expressly given permission. The first contributors to OCA were the University of California, the University of Toronto, the European Archive, the National Archives in United Kingdom, O'Reilly Media, and the Prelinger Archives.
In 2006, Microsoft, while being one of the OCA partners, began developing its own digital library. The beta version of Microsoft Live Search Books was released in December 2006, with a collection of non copyrighted books digitized by Microsoft in partner libraries. The first partner libraries were the British Library and the libraries of the Universities of California and Toronto, followed in January 2007 by the New York Public Library and Cornell University Library. Books offered full text views, with a search by keyword, and could be downloaded as PDF files. In May 2007, Microsoft announced agreements with several publishers, for example Cambridge University Press and McGraw Hill, for their books to be available in Live Search Books. After digitizing 750,000 books and indexing 80 million journal articles, Microsoft ended the Live Search Books program in May 2008 and closed the website. All the digitized books were transferred into the OCA collection of the Internet Archive.
The OCA collection offered one million books in December 2008, and two million books in March 2010.
2006 > THE UNION CATALOG WORLDCAT ON THE WEB
[Summary] In August 2006, WorldCat, a union catalog run by OCLC (Online Computer Library Center), began migrating to the web with a version available for free. OCLC was founded as early as 1971 as a non-profit organization dedicated to furthering access to the world's information while reducing information costs. In 2005, WorldCat had 61 million bibliographic records in 400 languages, provided by 9,000 member libraries in 112 countries. In 2006, 73 million bibliographic records were linking to one billion documents available in these libraries. Through the current worldcat.org, member libraries have provided free access to their catalogs, and free or paid access to their electronic resources: books, audiobooks, abstracts and full-text articles, photos, music CDs, and videos. In April 2010, 1,5 billion documents could be located and/or accessed using WorldCat. The other main union catalog was run by RLG (Research Librairies Group), that merged with OCLC in November 2006.
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In August 2006, WorldCat, a union catalog run by OCLC (Online Computer Library Center), began migrating to the web with a version available for free.
WorldCat followed the steps of RLG (Research Libraries Group), that launched the free web version of the RLG Union Catalog, called RedLightGreen, in fall 2003, with a full version available in spring 2004.
OCLC and RLG were running the two largest union catalogs in the world.
What exactly is a union catalog? The idea behind a union catalog is to earn time by avoiding the cataloging of the same document by many catalogers worldwide. When catalogers of a member library (paid subscription) process a new document, they first search the union catalog. If the record is available, they import it into their own catalog and add the local data. If the record is not available, they create it in their own catalog and export it into the union catalog, for the new record to be instantly available to all catalogers of member libraries. Depending on their status and experience, member libraries can either import records only, or both import and export records.
OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) was created in 1971 as a non- profit organization dedicated to furthering access to the world's information while reducing information costs. The OCLC Online Union Catalog, later renamed WorldCat, was first the union catalog of the university libraries in the State of Ohio, before becoming a national library cooperative and then an organization spreading worldwide, with WorldCat becoming one of the two largest union catalogs in the world (the other one being RLIN). In early 1998, WorldCat had 38 million records in 400 languages, and 27,000 member libraries in 65 countries, with 2 million records added annually.
WorldCat only accepted one bibliographic record per document, unlike RLIN, launched by RLG in 1980, that accepted several records per document, with 88 million records in early 1998. RLG members were mainly research and specialized libraries. RLIN was later renamed the RLG Union Catalog. Its free web version RedLightGreen was launched in fall 2003 as a beta version, and in spring 2004 as a full version.
In the meantime, WorldCat had 61 million bibliographic records in 400 languages in 2005, from 9,000 member libraries in 112 countries. In 2006, 73 million bibliographic records were linking to one billion documents available in these libraries.
In August 2006, WorldCat began migrating to the web with the beta version of its new website worldcat.org. Member libraries have provided free access to their catalogs, and free or paid access to their electronic resources: books, audiobooks, abstracts and full-text articles, photos, music CDs and videos. RedLightGreen closed its site in November 2006, and RLG merged with OCLC. In April 2010, 1,5 billion documents could be located and/or accessed using WorldCat.
2007 > THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF LIFE, A GLOBAL EFFORT
[Summary] The Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) was launched in May 2007 as a global scientific effort to document all known species of animals and plants (1.8 million), including endangered species, and expedite the millions of species yet to be discovered and cataloged (6 to 8 million). The encyclopedia's honorary chair is Edward Wilson, professor emeritus at Harvard University, who, in an essay dated 2002, was the first to express the wish for such an encyclopedia. Technology improvements made it possible five years later with content aggregators, mash-up, wikis, and large scale content management. The multimedia encyclopedia has gathered texts, photos, maps, sound, and videos, with a webpage for each species, to provide a single portal for millions of documents scattered online and offline. The first pages were available in mid- 2008. The encyclopedia will be translated into other languages with the help of partner organizations.
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The Encyclopedia of Life was launched in May 2007 as a global scientific effort to document all known species of animals and plants.
There are 1.8 million species, including endangered species, and millions of species yet to be discovered and cataloged, probably 6 to 8 million.
This collaborative effort is led by several main institutions: FieldMuseum of Natural History, Harvard University, Marine BiologicalLaboratory, Missouri Botanical Garden, Smithsonian Institution,Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL).
The initial funding came from the MacArthur Foundation (US $10 million) and the Sloan Foundation ($2.5 million). A $100 million funding over ten years will be necessary before self-financing.
The encyclopedia's honorary chair is Edward Wilson, professor emeritus at Harvard University, who, in an essay dated 2002, was the first to express the wish for such an encyclopedia. Technology improvements made it possible five years later, with content aggregators, mash-up, wikis, and large scale content management.
Based on the work of thousands of experts around the globe, the multimedia encyclopedia will gather texts, photos, maps, sound and videos, with a webpage for each species. It will provide a single portal for millions of documents scattered online and offline. As a teaching and learning tool for a better understanding of our planet, the encyclopedia will reach everyone: researchers, teachers, students, pupils, media, policy makers, and the general public, who will be able to contribute in a wiki-style environment, with contributions checked by experts.
As a consortium of the ten largest life science libraries, with other libraries to join in the future, the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) started the digitization of 2 million documents from public domain spanning over 200 years. In May 2007, when the project was officially launched, 1.25 million pages were already digitized in London, Boston and Washington D.C., and available in the Internet Archive.
The first pages of the encyclopedia were designed in 2007, and available in mid-2008. The encyclopedia should be fully "operational" in 2012 and completed with all known species in 2017. People will be able to use the encyclopedia as a "macroscope" to identify major trends from a considerable stock of information — in the same way they use a microscope for the study of detail. The English version will be translated in several languages by partner organizations.
2007 > THE FUTURE OF EBOOKS SEEN FROM FRANCE
[Summary] Marc Autret, a journalist and graphic designer, wrote in December 2006: "I am convinced that the ebook has a great future in all non-fiction sectors. I refer to the ebook as a software and not as a dedicated physical medium (the conjecture is more uncertain on this point). (…) Non-commercial ebooks are already emerging everywhere while opening the way to new developments. To my eyes, there are at least two emerging trends: (a) an increasingly attractive and functional interface for reading/consultation (navigation, research, restructuring on the fly, user annotations, interactive quiz); (b) a multimedia integration (video, sound, animated graphics, database) now strongly coupled to the web. No physical book offers such features. So I imagine the ebook of the future as a kind of wiki crystallized and packaged in a given format. How valuable will it be? Its value will be the one of a book: the unity and quality of editorial work!"
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In late 2006, I launched an inquiry about how people were seeing the future of ebooks. Here are the answers from Pierre Schweitzer, Denis Zwirn and Marc Autret, three French “pioneers” in their own fields.
Pierre Schweitzer is the inventor of the @folio project, a mobile device for texts. He wrote in December 2006: "The luck we all have is to live this fantastic change here and now. When I was born in 1963, a computer memory could only hold a few pages of characters. Today, my music player could hold billions of pages, a true local library. Tomorrow, by the combined effect of the Moore Law and the ubiquity of networks, we will have instant access to works and knowledge. We won't be much interested any more on which device to store information. We will be interested in handy functions and beautiful objects."
Denis Zwirn is the founder of Numilog, the main French-language digital bookstore. He wrote in August 2007: "The digital book is not any more a topic for symposiums, conceptual definitions, or divination by some 'experts'. It is a commercial product and a tool for reading. There is no need to wait for some new hypermodern and hypertextual tool carefully orchestrating its specificity from the print book. We need to offer books that can be easily read on any electronic device used by customers, sooner or later with an electronic ink display. And to offer them as an industry. The digital book is not, and will never be, a niche product (dictionaries, travel guides, books for the blind). It is becoming a mass market product, with multiple forms, like the traditional book."
After being a journalist specialized in publishing, multimedia and copyright, Marc Autret is a graphic designer working with publishers. He wrote in December 2006: "I am convinced that the ebook has a great future in all non-fiction sectors. I refer to the ebook as a software and not as a dedicated physical medium (the conjecture is more uncertain on this point). The [European] publishers of guides, encyclopedias and informative books in general still see the ebook as a very minor variation of the printed book, probably because the business model and secure management don't seem entirely stabilized. But this is a matter of time. Non-commercial ebooks are already emerging everywhere while opening the way to new developments.