= [Overview]
The first library website was the one created by the Helsinki
City Library in Finland, which went live in February 1994. Four
years later, in 1998, more and more traditional libraries had a
website as a new "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 developed digital libraries alongside their standard
collections, for a large audience to be able to access their
specialized, old, local and regional collections, including
images and sound. Librarians could now fulfill two goals that
used to be in contradiction - preservation (on shelves) and
communication (on the internet). Library treasures went online,
like Beowulf on the website of the British Library. Beowulf is
the earliest known narrative poem in English, and one of the
most famous works of Anglo-Saxon poetry. The British Library
holds the only known manuscript of Beowulf, dated circa 1000,
and digitized it for the world to enjoy.
= Libraries create websites
Libraries began creating websites as a "virtual" window, as
well as digital libraries stemming from their print
collections. Thousands of public works, literary and scientific
articles, pictures and sound tracks became available on the
screen for free.
On the one hand, books were taken out of their shelves only
once to be scanned. On the other hand, books could easily be
accessed anywhere at any time, without the need to go to the
library and struggle through a lengthy process to access the
original books, because of reduced opening hours, forms to fill
out, safety concerns for rare and fragile books, and shortage
of staff. Some researchers still remember the unfailing
patience and an out-of-the-ordinary determination they needed
to finally get to a given book in some cases. People could now
access digital facsimiles, and access the original books only
when needed.
Before broadband internet became mainstream, full-screen images
were quite long to appear on the screen. After enthusiastically
posting large image files, librarians decided to post small
images that people could either see as is, or click on to get a
larger format.
Some amazing image collections went online, for example
American Memory, as "an effort to digitize and deliver
electronically the distinctive, historical Americana holdings
at Library of Congress, including photographs, manuscripts,
rare books, maps, recorded sound, and moving pictures".
SPIRO (Slide and Photograph Image Retrieval Online) was the
Visual Online Public Access Catalog (VOPAC) for UC (University
of California) Berkeley's Architecture Slide Library (ASL)
collection of 200,000 35mm slides.
IMAGES 1 was the database of the Pictorial Collection at the
National Library of Australia, with 15,000 historical and
contemporary images relating to Australia and its influence in
the world, including paintings, drawings, rare prints, objects
and photographs.
Librarians also 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. Some patrons were already hoping that online catalogs
would no longer only be a list of bibliographic records, and a
prelude to a lengthy process to find the document itself if it
didn't belong to their library - forms to fill out for
interlibrary loan, fees to pay in some cases, and a long
waiting period to finally get the book. They were hoping that,
some day, bibliographic catalogs would give instant online
access to the full text of books and journals.
= Gabriel in Europe
Gabriel - an acronym for "Gateway and Bridge to Europe's
National Libraries" - was launched as a trilingual (English,
French, German) website by the Conference of European National
Librarians (CENL).
As stated on the website in 1998: "Gabriel also recalls Gabriel
Naudé, whose 'Advis pour dresser une bibliothèque' (Paris,
1627) is one of the earliest theoretical works about libraries
in any European language and provides a blueprint for the great
modern research library. The name Gabriel is common to many
European languages and is derived from the Old Testament, where
Gabriel appears as one of the archangels or heavenly
messengers. He also appears in a similar role in the New
Testament and the Qu'ran."
In 1998, 38 national libraries participated in Gabriel: the
ones of Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech
Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece,
Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein,
Lithuania, Luxembourg, (Former Yugoslav Republic of) Macedonia,
Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia,
San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland,
Turkey, United Kingdom, and Vatican City.
How did Gabriel begin? During the 1994 CENL meeting in Oslo,
Norway, it was suggested that national libraries should set up
a common electronic board with updates about their ongoing
projects. Representatives from the national libraries of
Netherlands (Koninklijke Bibliotheek), United Kingdom (British
Library) and Finland (Helsinki University Library) met in March
1995 in The Hague, Netherlands, to launch the pilot Gabriel
project. Three other national libraries joined the project, the
ones of Germany (Deutsche Bibliothek), France (Bibliothèque
nationale de France) and Poland (Biblioteka Narodowa). Gabriel
would describe their services and collections, while seeking to
attract other national libraries into the project. The original
Gabriel website was launched in September 1995. It was
maintained by the British Library Network Services and mirrored
by the national libraries of Netherlands and Finland.
In November 1995, other national libraries were invited to
submit entries describing their services and collections. At
the same time, more and more national libraries were launching
their own websites and online catalogs. Gabriel also became a
common portal for those.
During the 1996 CENL meeting in Lisbon, Portugal, it was
decided that Gabriel would become an official CENL website in
January 1997. Gabriel was maintained by the national library in
the Netherlands, and mirrored by four other national libraries,
in United Kingdom, Finland, Germany, and Slovenia.
Eight years later, in summer 2005, Gabriel merged with the
European Library's website, as a common portal for the 43
national libraries in Europe. In March 2006, the European
Commission launched the project of a European digital library,
after a “call for ideas” from September to December 2005. This
European digital library – named Europeana - opened its
"virtual" doors in November 2008, with a crash from the server
within 24 hours, followed by an experimental period with part
of the collections.
In 1998, eight years before launching Europeana, the European
Commission was running a Library Program(me) for public
libraries, that aimed "to help increase the ready availability
of library resources across Europe, and to facilitate their
interconnection with the information and communications
infrastructure. Its two main orientations will be the
development of advanced systems to facilitate user access to
library resources, and the interconnection of libraries with
other libraries and the developing 'information highway'.
Validation tests will be accompanied by measures to promote
standards, disseminate results, and raise the awareness of
library staff about the possibilities afforded by telematics
systems."
In December 1998, according to a document posted on the website
of the European Commission, 1,000 public libraries from 26
European countries had their own websites, that ranged from one
webpage - with a postal address and opening hours - to several
webpages - with full access to the library's OPAC (Online
Public Access Catalog) and a variety of services. The leading
countries were Finland (247 libraries), Sweden (132 libraries),
United Kingdom (112 libraries), Denmark (107 libraries),
Germany (102 libraries), Netherlands (72 libraries), Lithuania
(51 libraries), Spain (56 libraries), and Norway (45
libraries). Newcomers were the Czech Republic (29 libraries)
and Portugal (3 libraries). Russia had a common website for 26
public reference libraries.
= Digital libraries
# A definition
What exactly is a digital library? The Universal Library
Project, hosted by Carnegie Mellon University, defined it in
1998 as "a digital library of digital documents, artifacts, and
records. The advantage of having library material available in
digital form is threefold: (1) the content occupies less space
and can be replicated and made secure electronically; (2) the
content can be made immediately available over the internet to
anyone, anywhere; and (3) search for content can be automated.
The promise of the digital library is the promise of great cost
reductions while providing great increases in archive
availability and accessibility. (...) There are literally
thousands of digital library initiatives of a great many
varieties going on in the world today. Digital libraries are
being formed of scholarly works, archives of historical figures
and events, corporate and governmental records, museum
collections and religious collections. Some take the form of
scanning and putting documents to the World Wide Web. Still
other digital libraries are formed of digitizing paintings,
films and music. Work even exists in 3D reconstructive
digitization that permits a digital deconstruction, storage,
transmission, and reconstruction of solid object."
Since the mid-1990s, libraries were studying how to store an
enormous amount of data and make it available on the internet
through a reliable search engine. Library 2000 was a project
run between 1995 and 1998 by the MIT Laboratory for Computer
Science (MIT: Massachusetts Institute of Technology) to explore
the implications of large scale online storage, using the
digital library of the future as an example. It developed a
prototype using the technology and system configurations
expected to be economically feasible in 2000.
Another project was the Digital Library Initiative, supported
by grants from NSF (National Science Foundation), DARPA
(Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and NASA (National
Aeronautics and Space Administration). As mentioned on its
website in 1998: "The Initiative's focus is to dramatically
advance the means to collect, store, and organize information
in digital forms, and make it available for searching,
retrieval, and processing via communication networks - all in
user-friendly ways."
The British Library was a pioneer in Europe. Brian Lang, chief
executive of the library, explained on its website in 1998: "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."
The Digital Library Programme was expected to begin in 1999.
"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."
Another pioneer in Europe was the French National Library (BnF:
Bibliothèque nationale de France). The BnF launched its digital
library Gallica in October 1997 as an experimental project to
offer digitized texts and images from print collections
relating to French history, life and culture. When interviewed
by Jérôme Strazzulla in the daily Le Figaro of June 3, 1998,
Jean-Pierre Angremy, president of BnF, stated: "We cannot, we
will not be able to digitize everything. In the long term, a
digital library will only be one element of the whole library."
The first step of the program, a major collection of 19th-
century French texts and images, was available online one year
later.
# Some projects
In Germany, the Bielefeld University Library (Bibliothek der
Universität Bielefeld) began posting online versions of German
rare prints in 1996. Michael Behrens, in charge of the digital
library project, wrote in September 1998: "To some here,
'digital library' seems to be everything that, even remotely,
has to do with the internet. The library started its own web
server some time in summer 1995. (...) Before that, it had been
offering most of its services via Telnet, which wasn't used
much by patrons, although in theory they could have accessed a
lot of material from home. But in those days almost nobody
really had internet access at home... We started digitizing
rare prints from our own library, and some rare prints which
were sent in via library loan, in November 1996. (...)
In that first phase of our attempts at digitization, starting
November 1996 and ending June 1997, 38 rare prints were scanned
as image files and made available via the web. During the same
time, there were also a few digital materials prepared as
accompanying material for lectures held at the university
(image files as excerpts from printed works). These are, for
copyright reasons, not available outside of campus. The next
step, which is just being completed, is the digitization of the
Berlinische Monatsschrift, a German periodical from the
Enlightenment, comprising 58 volumes, and 2,574 articles on
30,626 pages. A somewhat bigger digitization project of German
periodicals from the 18th and early 19th century is planned.
The size will be about 1,000,000 pages. These periodicals will
be not just from the holdings of this library, but the project
would be coordinated here, and some of the technical would be
done here, also."
Other digital libraries were created from scratch, with no back
up from a traditional library. They were "only" digital. This
was the case of Athena in Switzerland, and Projetto Manuzio in
Italy.
Athena was founded in 1994 by Pierre Perroud, a Swiss teacher,
and hosted on the website of the University of Geneva. Athena
was created as a multilingual digital library specializing in
philosophy, science, literature, history and economics, either
by digitizing documents or by providing links to existing
etexts. The Helvetia section provided documents about
Switzerland. Geneva being the main city in French-speaking
Switzerland, Athena also focused on putting French texts
online. A specific page offered an extensive selection of other
digital libraries worldwide, with relevant links.
Projetto Manuzio was launched by Liber Liber as as a free
digital library for texts in Italian. Liber Liber is an Italian
cultural association aimed at the promotion of any kind of
artistic and intellectual expression. It wanted to link
humanities and science by using computer technology in
humanities. Projetto Manuzio was named after the famous 16th-
century Venetian publisher who improved the printing techniques
invented by Gutenberg.
As stated on its website in 1998, Projetto Manuzio wanted "to
make a noble idea real: the idea of making culture available to
everybody. How? By making books, graduation theses, articles,
tales or any other document which could be digitized in a
computer available all over the world, at any minute and free
of charge. Via modem, or using floppy disks (in this case, by
adding the cost of a blank disk and postal fees), it is already
possible to get hundreds of books. And Projetto Manuzio needs
only a few people to make such a masterpiece as Dante
Alighieri's Divina Commedia available to millions of people."
Some "only" digital libraries were organized around an author,
for example The Marx/Engels Internet Archive (MEIA). MEIA was
created in 1996 to offer a chronology of the collected works of
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, and link this chronology to the
digital versions of these works "as one work after another is
brought online". As explained on the website in 1998: "There's
no way to monetarily profit from this project. 'Tis a labor of
love undertaken in the purest communitarian sense. The real
'profit' will hopefully manifest in the form of individual
enlightenment through easy access to these classic works.
Besides, transcribing them is an education in itself... Let us
also add that this is not a sectarian/One-Great-Truth effort.
Help from any individual or any group is welcome. We have but
one slogan: 'Piping Marx & Engels into cyberspace!'"
A search engine was set up for the digital library. "As larger
works come online, they will also have small search pages made
for them alone - for instance, Capital will have a search page
for that work alone."
The Biographical Archive gave access to biographies of Marx and
Engels, as well as short biographies and photographs of their
family members and friends. The Photo Gallery gathered photos
of the Marx and Engels clan from 1839 to 1894, and their
dwellings from 1818 to 1895, with "many more to come". The
section “Others” included a list of works from all Marxist
writers, for example James Connolly, Daniel DeLeon and Hal
Draper, as well as a short biography. The Non-English Archive
listed the works of Marx and Engels freely available online in
other languages (Danish, French, German, Greek, Italian,
Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish). It seems
that the project was later renamed the Marxists Internet
Archive.
= Library treasures go online
Libraries began digitizing their treasures, and putting the
digital versions on the web for the world to enjoy. The British
Library was a pioneer in this field. One of the first digitized
treasures was Beowulf, the earliest known narrative poem in
English, and one of the most famous works of Anglo-Saxon
poetry. The British Library holds the only known manuscript of
Beowulf, dated circa 1000. The poem itself is much older than
the manuscript - some historians believe it might have been
written circa 750. The manuscript was badly damaged by fire in
1731. 18th-century transcripts mentioned hundreds of words and
characters which were then visible along the charred edges, and
subsequently crumbled away over the years. To halt this
process, each leaf was mounted on a paper frame in 1845.
Scholarly discussions on the date of creation and provenance of
the poem continue around the world, and researchers regularly
require access to the manuscript. Taking Beowulf out of its
display case for study not only raised conservation issues, it
also made it unavailable for the many visitors who were coming
to the British Library expecting to see this literary treasure
on display. Digitization of the manuscript offered a solution
to these problems, as well as providing new opportunities for
researchers and readers worldwide.
The Electronic Beowulf Project was launched as a database of
digital images of the Beowulf manuscript, as well as related
manuscripts and printed texts. In 1998, the database included
the fiber-optic readings of hidden characters and ultra-violet
readings of erased text in the manuscript; the full electronic
facsimiles of the 18th-century transcripts of the manuscript;
and selections from the main 19th-century collations, editions
and translations. Major additions to the database were planned
for the following years, such as images of contemporary
manuscripts, links to the Toronto Dictionary of Old English
Project, and links to the comprehensive Anglo-Saxon
bibliographies of the Old English Newsletter.
The database project was developed in partnership with two
leading experts in the United States, Kevin Kiernan, from the
University of Kentucky, and Paul Szarmach, from the Medieval
Institute of Western Michigan University. Professor Kiernan
edited the electronic archive and supervised the making of a
CD-ROM with the main electronic images.
Brian Lang, chief executive of the British Library, explained
on its website in 1998: "The Beowulf manuscript is a unique
treasure and imposes on the Library a responsibility to
scholars throughout the world. Digital photography offered for
the first time the possibility of recording text concealed by
early repairs, and a less expensive and safer way of recording
readings under special light conditions. It also offers the
prospect of using image enhancement technology to settle
doubtful readings in the text. Network technology has
facilitated direct collaboration with American scholars and
makes it possible for scholars around the world to share in
these discoveries. Curatorial and computing staff learned a
great deal which will inform any future programmes of
digitization and network service provision the Library may
undertake, and our publishing department is considering the
publication of an electronic scholarly edition of Beowulf. This
work has not only advanced scholarship; it has also captured
the imagination of a wider public, engaging people (through
press reports and the availability over computer networks of
selected images and text) in the appreciation of one of the
primary artefacts of our shared cultural heritage."
Other treasures of the British Library were available online as
well: "Magna Carta", the first English constitutional text,
signed in 1215, with the Great Seal of King John; the
"Lindisfarne Gospels", dated 698; the "Diamond Sutra", dated
868, sometimes referred to as the world's earliest print book;
the "Sforza Hours", dated 1490-1520, an outstanding Renaissance
treasure; the "Codex Arundel", a notebook from Leonardo Da
Vinci, in the late 15th or early 16th century; and the "Tyndale
New Testament", as the first print version in English by Peter
Schoeffer in Worms.
New treasures followed. The digitized version of the Bible of
Gutenberg was available online in November 2000. Gutenberg
printed its Bible in 1454 or 1455 in Germany, perhaps printing
180 copies, with 48 copies still available in 2000, and three
copies - two full ones and one partial one - at the British
Library. The two full copies - a little different from each
other - 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 digital version on the web a few months later.