[Each line begins with the year or the year/month.]
1968: ASCII is the first character set encoding.
1971: Project Gutenberg is the first digital library.
1974: The internet takes off.
1977: UNIMARC is created as a common bibliographic format for
library catalogs.
1984: Copyleft is a new license for computer software.
1990: The web is invented by Tim Berners-Lee.
1991/01: Unicode is a universal character set encoding for
all languages.
1993/01: The Online Books Page is a list of free ebooks on
the internet.
1993/06: Adobe launches PDF, Acrobat Reader and Adobe
Acrobat.
1993/11: Mosaic is the first web browser.
1994: The first library website goes online.
1994: Bold publishers post free digital versions of
copyrighted books.
1995/07: Amazon.com is the first main online bookstore.
1995: Mainstream print newspapers and magazines launch their
own websites.
1996/03: The Palm Pilot is launched as the first PDA.
1996/04: The Internet Archive is founded to archive the web.
1996: Teachers explore new ways of teaching using the
internet.
1997/01: Multimedia convergence is the topic of a symposium.
1997/04: E Ink begins developing a technology called
electronic ink.
1997: Online publishing begins spreading.
1997: The Logos Dictionary goes online for free.
1998/05: 00h00.com sells books "only" in digital format.
1998: Library treasures like Beowulf go online.
1999/09: The Open eBook (OeB) format is created as a
standard for ebooks.
1999/12: Britannica.com is available for free on the web (for
a short time).
1999: Librarians become webmasters.
1999: Authors go digital.
2000/01: The Million Book Project wants to digitize one
million books.
2000/01: Gemstar TV-Guide International buys the 00h00.com.
2000/02: yourDictionary.com is a major language portal.
2000/03: Mobipocket focuses on readers (software) and ebooks
for PDAs.
2000/07: Non-English-speaking internet users reach 50%.
2000/07: Stephen King (self-)publishes a novel "only" on the
web.
2000/08: Microsoft launches its own reader (software) and LIT
format.
2000/09: GDT is a main bilingual (English, French) free
translation dictionary.
2000/09: Numilog is an online bookstore selling "only"
digital books.
2000/09: Handicapzero is a portal for the visually impaired
and blind community.
2000/10: The Public Library of Science works on free online
journals.
2000/10: Distributed Proofreaders helps in digitizing books
from public domain.
2000/10: Gemstar TV-Guide International launches the Gemstar
eBook.
2000/11: The British Library posts the digitized Bible of
Gutenberg.
2001/01: Wikipedia is a main free online cooperative
encyclopedia.
2001: Creative Commons works on new ways of respecting
authors' rights.
2003/09: MIT offers its course materials for free in its
OpenCourseWare.
2004/01: Project Gutenberg Europe is launched as a
multilingual project.
2004/10: Google launches Google Print to rename it Google
Books later on.
2005/04: Amazon.com buys Mobipocket, its software and ebooks.
2005/10: The Open Content Alliance works on a universal
public digital library.
2006/08: Google Books has several partner libraries and
publishers.
2006/08: The union catalog WorldCat is available for free on
the web.
2006/10: Sony launches its new reading device, the Sony
Reader.
2006/12: Microsoft launches Live Search Books (and drops the
project later on).
2007/03: Citizendium works on a main "reliable" online
cooperative encyclopedia.
2007/03: IATE is the new terminological database of the
European community.
2007/05: The Encyclopedia of Life will document all known
species of animals and plants.
2007/11: Amazon.com launches Kindle, its own reading device.
2008/05: Hachette Livre buys the digital bookstore Numilog.
2008/10: Google Books settles a lawsuit with associations of
authors and publishers.
2008/11: Europeana starts as the European digital library.
2009/02: Amazon.com launches Kindle 2.