[Overview]
The first library website was the one created by the Helsinki City
Library in Finland, which went live in February 1994. Traditional
libraries began using a website as a new virtual window for their
patrons and beyond. Patrons could check opening hours, browse the
online catalog, or surf on a broad selection of websites on various
topics, depending on their needs. Libraries also began developing
digital libraries alongside their standard collections, for a large
audience to be able to access their specialized, old, local and
regional collections. Librarians could now fulfill two goals that used
to be in contradiction - book preservation (on shelves) and book
communication (on the internet).
[In Depth (published in 1999)]
The first library website was the one created by the Helsinki City
Library in Finland, which went live in February 1994. Many libraries
began developing a digital library alongside their standard
collections. Digital libraries allowed a large audience to have access
to documents belonging to specialized, old, local or regional
collections. Thanks to their digital libraries, traditional libraries
could achieve a long-time dream and fulfill two goals which used to be
in contradiction - book preservation and book communication. 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,
and read on the screen of a computer, without the need to go to the
library and struggle through a lengthy process to have access to the
original books, for various reasons: concern for preservation of rare
and fragile documents, reduced opening hours, forms to fill out, long
waiting period to get the document, and shortage of staff. All these
reasons were often hurdles to get over, and often required of the
researcher an unfailing patience and an out-of-the-ordinary
determination to finally get to the document.
Some virtual libraries were created from scratch, right on the internet
from the beginning, with no back up from a traditional library. This
was the case of Athena, founded in 1994 by Pierre Perroud, a Swiss
teacher, and hosted on the website of the University of Geneva,
Switzerland. Athena was created as a multilingual digital library
focusing on philosophy, science, classics, literature, history, and
economics. As Geneva is in French-speaking Switzerland, it also focused
on putting French texts online. The Helvetia section gathered documents
about Switzerland. A specific page offered a number of links to other
digital libraries in the world.
In an interview dated February 1996, Pierre Perroud explained:
"Electronic texts represent an encouragement to reading and a convivial
participation to culture dissemination, (...) [and] a good complement
to the paper book, which remains irreplaceable for reading (...). [The
paper book] remains a mysteriously holy companion with profound
symbolism for us: we grip it in our hands, we hold it against our
bodies, we look at it with admiration; its small size comforts us and
its content impresses us; its fragility contains a density we are
fascinated by; like man it fears water and fire, but it has the power
to shelter man's thoughts from time." (excerpt from the Swiss magazine
Informatique-Informations)
The Internet Public Library (IPL) opened in March 1995 as the first
digital public library of and for the internet community. Its different
sections were: Reference, Exhibits, Magazines and Serials, Newspapers,
Online Texts, and Web Searching. There were also sections for Teen and
Youth. All the items of the collections were carefully selected,
catalogued and described by the IPL staff. As an experimental library,
IPL also listed the most interesting projects run by librarians on the
internet, in the section Especially for Librarians.