The British Library was a pioneer in Europe as early as 1997. As
explained on its website by Brian Lang, chief executive of the library:
"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. (...)
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."
October 1997 > Gallica, the digital library of the French National
Library
The French National Library (BnF: Bibliothèque nationale de France)
launched its digital library Gallica in October 1997 as an experimental
project to offer digitized texts and images from print collections
related to French history, life and culture, beginning with the 19th
century. It quickly became one of the largest digital libraries
available on the internet. The books ranged from the Middle Ages to the
early 20th century, and were digitized as image files, for cost
reasons. In December 2006, the Gallica collection included 90,000 books
and periodicals, 80,000 images, and a number of sound files. Gallica
also began converting image files of books into text files, to allow
full-text searching. In March 2010, the revamped site of Gallica
(launched in March 2008) reached one million documents, most of which
are available for free.