publicize Crash, a print zine I'd recently made electronic versions of. All I
could find was the alt.zines newsgroup and the archives at The WELL and ETEXT. I
felt there was a need for something less ephemeral and more organized, a
directory that kept track of where e-zines could be found. So I summarized the
relevant info from a couple dozen e-zines and created the first version of this
list.
Initially, I maintained the list by hand in a text editor; eventually, I wrote
my own database program (in the Perl language) that automatically generates all
the text, links, and files.
In the four years I've been publishing the list, the Net has changed
dramatically, in style as well as scale. When I started the list, e-zines were
usually a few kilobytes of plain text stored in the depths of an FTP server;
high style was having a Gopher menu, and the Web was just a rumor of a myth. The
number of living e-zines numbered in the low dozens, and nearly all of them were
produced using the classic self-publishing method: scam resources from work when
no one's looking.
Now the e-zine world is different. The number of e-zines has increased a
hundredfold, crawling out of the FTP and Gopher woodworks to declaring
themselves worthy of their own domain name, even of asking for financial support
through advertising. Even the term 'e-zine' has been co-opted by the commercial
world, and has come to mean nearly any type of publication distributed
electronically. Yet there is still the original, independent fringe, who
continue to publish from their heart, or push the boundaries of what we call a
'zine'."
5.2. Future Trends for the On-Line Press
A new type of press has been born. In an article of the French daily newspaper
Libération of March 21, 1997, Laurent Mauriac underlined the fact that February
28, 1997, was an important date in the history of press, journalism and the
Internet. At 3.15 PM, one of the ten U.S. main daily newspapers, the Dallas
Morning News, gave an exclusive on its website: Timothy McVeigh, the main
suspect in the Oklahoma City bomb attack, just admitted he was guilty of this
crime. Suddenly, the relationship between the on-line issue and the paper issue
were inverted - for the first time, an exclusive piece of news was not given by
a paper issue but by an on-line issue.
Less than one year later, the new mechanism was running fine. Pierre Briançon,
another journalist of Libération, explained in an article of January 30, 1998,
that the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal (about the sexual relationship
between the president of the United States and a White House intern) was "the
first main political event all the details of which are instantaneously
reproduced on the Web". Most of the main media in the world were running a
special web page or report on this matter. "For the first time, the Web appears
as a direct and violent competitor, not only of newspapers - handicapped by
their periodicity - but also of radios or televisions."
As these two examples show, the introduction of the Web in the press, and vice
versa, created a new type of press on-line, which offers almost instantaneous
information, or in any case much quicker than that given by TV and radio. The
information can also be much more comprehensive thanks to the hyperlinks leading
to other information sources and documents.
However, as was made clear particularly during the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal,
cyberjournalists need a professional code of ethics. In an interview given to
the German multimedia magazine Com! in March 1998, Hermann Meyn, president of
the Federation of German Journalists (Deutscher Journalisten Verband - DJV)
showed the necessity for such a code because the flood of information is much
more rapid on the Internet than in the classic media, and rumors and false news
spread much more quickly. National laws would not be enough to fight against
this tendency on the Internet which is a worldwide computer network. A
professional code of ethics for journalists would be much more effective.
Another important problem is the constant pressure exerted on journalists.
During the ILO Symposium on Multimedia Convergence held in January 1997, Bernie
Lunzer, Secretary-Treasurer of the Newspaper Guild, United States, stated:
"Our reporters have seen new deadline pressures build as the material is used
throughout the day, not just at the end of the day. There is also a huge safety
problem in the newsrooms themselves due to repetitive strain injuries. Some
people are losing their careers at the age of 34 and 40 due to repetitive strain
injuries, a problem that was unheard of in the age of the typewriter. But as
people work 8- to 10-hour shifts without ever leaving their terminals, this has
become an increasing problem."
Carlos Alberto de Almeida, president of the Federación Nacional de Periodistas
(FENAJ) (National Federation of Professional Journalists), also denounced the
exploitation of journalists:
"Technology offers the opportunity to rationalize work, to reduce working time
and to encourage intellectual pursuits and even entertainment. But so far none
of this has happened. On the contrary, media professionals - whether executives,
journalists or others - are working longer and longer hours. If one were to
rigorously observe the labour legislation and the rights of professionals, then
the extraordinary positive aspects of these new technologies would emerge. This
has not been the case in Brazil. Journalists can be easily phoned on weekends to
do extra work without extra pay."
While it speeds up the production process, the automation of working methods,
beginning with digitization, leads to a decrease in human intervention and
consequently an increase in unemployment. Whereas previously, the production
staff had to retype the texts of the editorial staff, computerized typesetting
led to the combination of the two tasks of editing and composing. In advertising
services too, graphic design and commercial tasks are now integrated.
As Etienne Reichel, Acting Director of VISCOM (Visual Communication),
Switzerland, said:
"The work of 20 typesetters is now carried out by six qualified workers. There
has also been a concentration of centres of production, thus placing enormous
pressure on the small and medium-sized enterprises which are traditional sources
of employment. [...] Computer science makes it possible for experts to become
independent producers. Approximately 30 per cent of employees have set up
independently and have been able to carve out part of the market."
Although on-line services create some new jobs, as directors of organizations of
newspaper publishers often claim, the unions have also stated that the number of
job creations is much lower than the number of dismissals.
Even if the Internet is a huge information tank, the press will always need
journalists, as explained by Jean-Pierre Cloutier, editor of the Chroniques de
Cybérie, in an article of WebdoMag of July 1998:
"Some people predicted the short-term disappearance of the traditional media and
their creators. 'We won't need journalists any more when a good browser for News
groups is available', Michael Hauben of Columbia University warned two years
ago. 'The more people there are on-line, the more marginalized the professional
information media will be.' This is rubbish.
The spirit of discovery and the taste for exploration and technical
experimentation of those who were early in adopting the Internet (the ones that
the sociologists of the Net call the early doers) are not shared by the second
wave of users who now make up the largest part of this 'critical mass'.
And that is the challenge for the specialized press - to accompany the public in
its discovery of the new medium and in its appropriation of cyberspace, help
people to analyze, facilitate their understanding, add value to raw
information."
Moreover, with the Internet, it is possible to read on-line titles which are
difficult to find in newsstands, like the Algerian daily newspaper El Watan,
on-line since October 1997. When interviewed by the French daily newspaper Le
Monde of March 23, 1998, Redha Belkhat, chief editor, told: "For the Algerian
diaspora, to find in a newsstand of London, New York, or Ottawa an issue of El
Watan less than a week old is an achievement. Now the newspaper is here at 6 AM,
and at noon it is on the Internet."
Forbidden newspapers can also continue on-line thanks to the Internet, such as
the independent Algerian daily La Nation (The Nation). Because it was denouncing
the violation of human rights in Algeria, it had to stop its activities in
December 1996. One year later, a special issue was available on the site of
Reporters sans frontières (Reporters Without Borders) for the first anniversary
of its disappearance. Malti Djallan, who is at the origin of this Reporters sans
frontières initiative, explained: "By putting La Nation on-line, our goal was to
say: it no longer makes sense to censor the newspapers in Algeria, because
thanks to the Internet people can retrieve the articles, print them, and spread
them out around."
Nouvelles du bled (News of the Village) is an electronic newspaper created in
December 1997 by Christian Debraisne, who is French, and Mohamed Zaoui, an
Algerian journalist in exile. The team includes about twelve persons who meet on
Thursday evenings in a Parisian café. When interviewed in Le Monde of March 23,
1998, Christian Debraisne, who is responsible for the composition, explained:
"With the Internet, we found a space for free expression and, as a bonus, there
were no printing and distribution problems. I get all the articles and I put
them on-line during the night from my house."
The press review is prepared using the newspapers of Algiers, Algeria. In the
same article, Mohamed Zaoui explained:
"The editorial staff of El Watan, for example, sends us articles which cannot be
published there. It is a way to confound censorship. I wanted to be useful and I
thought that my role as a journalist was to seize the opportunity the Internet
was offering to air opinions other than the Algerian government's and the
fundamentalists'."
The press now has to confront all the Internet's resources:
- instant access to many information servers;
- speed in information dissemination;
- development of main photographic archives;
- gigantic documentation capacity (geographical maps, biographical notes,
official texts, political and economic documents, audiovisual and video
documents, etc.) going from the general to the specialized and vice versa;
- links to all these information sources and other articles on the same topic;
and
- archives equipped with a search engine allowing the retrieval of articles by
date, author, title, subject, etc.
Because of these resources, the Internet brings in-depth information that no
other media could bring so easily. Daily information is supported by a whole
encyclopedia which helps to understand it.
Even if audiovisual and video techniques are more and more present in the
on-line press, the most important thing is still its content, as Jean-Pierre
Cloutier, the editor of the Chroniques de Cybérie, reminded us in his e-mail of
June 8, 1998:
"For the Chroniques de Cybérie, we could launch and maintain a formula because
of the relatively low entry costs in this medium. However, everything will
depend on the scope of the phenomenon called media 'convergence' and a possible
rise of production costs if we need to offer audio and video products to stay
competitive. If that is the case, we will have to think over strategic
partnerships, a little like the one linking us to the group Ringier which
permitted the re-launching of the Chroniques after six months of inactivity. But
whatever the degree of convergence is, I think there will always be room for
written work, and also for in-depth analysis on the main questions."
6. LIBRARIES ON THE WEB
[In this chapter:]
[6.1. European and World Directories for Libraries / 6.2. The Internet in
Libraries]
This chapter focuses on traditional libraries, with librarians, walls, books and
periodicals lined up on shelves, and tables and chairs for the readers. The next
chapter will focus on digital libraries.
6.1. European and World Directories for Libraries
The first library website was that of the Helsinki City Library, Finland, which
opened in February 1994.
A trilingual English-French-German site, Gabriel (acronym for Gateway and Bridge
to Europe's National Libraries) is the World Wide Web service for Europe's
National Libraries represented in the Conference of European National Librarians
(CENL).
"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."
There are currently 38 national libraries from the member states of the Council
of Europe participating in CENL and Gabriel (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, The Netherlands,
Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia,
Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and Vatican City).
During the 1994 Oslo meeting of the Conference of European National Libraries,
it was suggested that national libraries should have an electronic noticeboard
available to one another as a means of keeping up-to-date with current
activities. An ad hoc meeting was held in The Hague, Netherlands, on March 27,
1995, at which representatives of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, British Library
and Helsinki University Library met to discuss the proposed CENL WWW. Objectives
were set out at the meeting and an action schedule agreed. These three libraries
set up the pilot Gabriel project. Three other national libraries agreed to
participate in the pilot project: Die Deutsche Bibliothek (Germany), the
Bibliothèque Nationale de France and the Biblioteka Narodowa (Poland). Working
together, these libraries created a functional pilot service based on entries
describing their own services and collections between March and September 1995.
The pilot service was endorsed by the CENL annual meeting at Bern in Switzerland
in September 1995 and launched on the Internet. The service was then mounted and
maintained in London by British Library Network Services and was mirrored in The
Hague, Netherlands, and Helsinki, Finland.
A second stage in the project was initiated on behalf of CENL in October 1995.
The project was hosted by the British Library in London. In November 1995,
national libraries that had not participated in the Gabriel pilot project were
invited to submit their entries. Using the pilot as a basis, this development
project aimed to achieve comprehensive coverage of European national libraries
within Gabriel. During the life of the project, the numbers of CENL member
libraries with their own WWW servers had increased quite rapidly. Every
participating library assigned staff members to act as contact persons for
Gabriel. This project ended in September 1996. As content and publicity built
up, and the numbers of linking sites expanded, measurable usage of the Gabriel
service had increased rapidly.
During the CENL meeting in September 1996 in Lisbon, the CENL members decided
that Gabriel should be launched as an official service of CENL on behalf of
Europe's national libraries on January 1, 1997. The editorial maintenance of
Gabriel was taken over by the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the National Library of
the Netherlands. The site is now mirrored from the websites of five national
libraries in The Hague (The Netherlands), London (United Kingdom), Helsinki
(Finland), Frankfort (Germany), and Ljubljana (Slovenia).
Updated in December 11, 1998, the introduction of Internet and the Library
Sphere: Further progress for European Libraries specifies:
"Public libraries have now established a presence on the Web which compares well
with the networked services which have been available for some time from
academic libraries and national libraries. Services include sophisticated
catalogue access for their users as well as links to other items of interest
(local services, general reference, distance education, external resources).
While it is difficult to keep track of developments, there are now probably some
1,000 public libraries from at least 26 European countries on the Web. This
trend can be expected to continue as most countries now have firm plans in
support of libraries in the Information Society.
There is, of course, a vast amount of networked information on libraries,
initially from North American sources but now increasingly from Europe and the
rest of the world. Not only have sites been created for most of our 99 EU
projects, but the eLib projects in the UK and some of the Autoroutes de
l'Information [information highways] projects in France have contributed
significantly. And last but not least, concerted efforts in the area of public
libraries, have added a wealth of accessible resources in a wide variety of
languages."
As for the 1,000 public libraries in 26 European countries, the leaders are
Finland (247), Sweden (132), the United Kingdom (112), Denmark (107), Germany
(102), the Netherlands (72), Lithuania (51), Spain (56), and Norway (45).
Newcomers are the Czech Republic (29) and Portugal (3). Russia maintains on the
Web a list of public reference libraries with 26 names. Sites vary significantly
between rudimentary information on addresses and opening hours to full access to
OPACs (on-line public access catalogs) and/or to a variety of local and external
services.
Compiled by Sheila and Robert Harden, Public Libraries of Europe is a
country-by-country listing of European public libraries on the Web.
I'm Europe, the site of the European Union, has a section General Library
Resources on the Web, with the following contents: library indexes; general
library resources; public library information; individual public libraries;
publishers and the book trade; other EU projects; and other sites of interest.
Library and Related Resources is maintained by Ian Tilsed on the site of the
Library and Information Service of the University of Exeter, United Kingdom. It
comprises: library information servers; library catalogues; library and
information science resources; library and related organizations; library
projects, reports, bibliographies and documentation; library related e-mail
lists and e-journals; LIS (library and information science) training &
professional development; museums; publishers and newspapers; scholarly
societies; indexes and bibliographic information sources; frequently asked
questions (FAQ) files; and web indexes and lists.
The Library of Congress's section Library and Information Science Resources
provides links to: general resources; national libraries; state libraries;
school library resources; library home pages; on-line catalogs; research and
reference; technical services; special collections; digital libraries;
professional organizations; library and information science schools;
professional journals; library vendors; and library conferences.
Compiled by the Berkeley Digital Library (California, USA), LibWeb: Library
Servers via WWW currently lists 2,500 web pages from libraries over 70 countries
(as of December 10, 1998), with a daily update. The search is available by
location, library type or library name.
6.2. The Internet in Libraries
The Libraries Programme of the European Union "aims 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."
Many libraries are developing a digital library alongside their other
collections. Digital libraries gather mainly texts, and sometimes images and
sounds as well. They allow a large audience to have access to documents
belonging to specialized, old, local or regional collections, which were
previously difficult to access for various reasons, including: 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 hurdles to get over and required of the researcher an unfailing
patience and an out-of-the-ordinary determination to finally get to the
document.
Beowulf, the first great English literary masterpiece, is a treasure of the
British Library. It is known only from a single 11th century manuscript, which
was badly damaged by fire in 1731. Transcriptions made in the late 18th century
show that many hundreds of words and letters then visible along the charred
edges subsequently crumbled away. To halt this process each leaf was mounted in
a paper frame in 1845. Scholarly discussion of the date, provenance and creation
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
raises conservation issues, it also makes it unavailable for the many visitors
who come to the Library expecting to see this most fundamental of literary
treasures on display. Digitization of the whole manuscript offered a solution to
these problems, as well as providing new opportunities for insight.
The Electronic Beowulf Project has assembled a huge database of digital images
of the Beowulf manuscript and related manuscripts and printed texts. The archive
already includes fiber-optic readings of hidden letters and ultraviolet readings
of erased text in the early 11th-century manuscript; full electronic facsimiles
of the 18th-century transcripts of the manuscript; and selections from important
19th-century collations, editions, and translations. Major additions will
include images of contemporary manuscript illuminations and material culture,
and links with the Toronto Dictionary of Old English project and with the
comprehensive Anglo-Saxon bibliographies of the Old English Newsletter.
The project has been developed by the British Library with two leading American
Anglo-Saxon experts, Kevin Kiernan of the University of Kentucky and Paul
Szarmach of the Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University. Professor
Kiernan is editing the electronic archive and is producing a CD-ROM electronic
facsimile that will bring together in an easy-to-use package all the different
types of images being collected.
As Brian Lang, Chief Executive of the British Library, explains on the website: