The book is no longer what it used to be.
The electronic book (ebook) was born in 1971, with the first
steps of Project Gutenberg, a digital library for books from
public domain. It is nearly 40 years old, already. But this is
a short life compared to the 5-century old print book.
The internet went live in 1974, with the creation of the
protocol TCP/IP by Vinton Cerf and Bob Kahn. It began spreading
in 1983 as a network for research centers and universities. It
got its first boost with the invention of the web by Tim
Berners-Lee in 1990, and its second boost with the release of
the first browser Mosaic in 1993. From 1994 onwards, the
internet quickly spread worldwide.
In Bookland, people were reluctant, curious or passionate.
The internet didn't bring print media, movies, radio or
television to an end. It created its own space as a new medium,
to get information, access documents, broaden our knowledge and
communicate across borders and languages.
Booksellers began selling books online within and outside their
home country, offering excerpts on their websites.
Libraries began creating websites as a "virtual" window, as
well as digital libraries stemming from their print
collections. Librarians helped patrons to surf on the web
without being drowned, and to find the information they needed
at a time search engines were less accurate. Library catalogs
went online. Union catalogs offered a common point for hundreds
and then thousands of catalogs.
Newspapers and magazines began being available online, as well
as their archives. Some journals became "only" electronic to
skip the costs of print publishing, while offering print on
demand. Some newsletters, zines and journals started online
from scratch, skipping a print version.
Authors began creating websites to self-publish their work or
post it while waiting to find a publisher. Communication with
readers became easier through email, forums, chat and instant
messaging. Some authors explored new ways of writing, called
hypertext literature.
More and more books were published with both a print version
and a digital version. Some books were "only" digital. Other
books were digitized from print versions.
New online bookstores began selling “only” digital books.
Aggregators partnered with publishers to produce and sell
digital versions of their books.
People no longer needed to run after information and to worry
about living in a remote place with no libraries and
bookstores. Information was there, by the numbers, available on
our screen, often at no cost.
In 2009, most of us would not be able to work, study,
communicate and entertain without connecting with others
through the internet.
Here is the "virtual" journey we are going to follow:
1971: Project Gutenberg is the first digital library
1990: The web boosts the internet
1993: The Online Books Page is a list of free ebooks
1994: Some publishers get bold and go digital
1995: Amazon.com is the first main online bookstore
1996: There are more and more texts online
1997: Multimedia convergence and employment
1998: Libraries take over the web
1999: Librarians get digital
2000: Information is available in many languages
2001: Copyright, copyleft and Creative Commons
2002: A web of knowledge
2003: eBooks are sold worldwide
2004: Authors are creative on the net
2005: Google gets interested in ebooks
2006: Towards a world public digital library
2007: We read on various electronic devices
2008: "A common information space in which we communicate"
Unless specified otherwise, quotations are excerpts from NEF
interviews <http://www.etudes-francaises.net/entretiens/>.