A Short History of EBooks Part 5

In United Kingdom, the daily Times and the Sunday Times set up a common website called Times Online, with a way to create a personalized edition. The weekly publication The Economist went online, as well as the daily Le Monde and Liberation in France, the daily El Pais in Spain, and the weekly Focus and Der Spiegel in Germany.

The computer press went logically online as well, first the monthly Wired, created in 1992 in California to cover cyberculture as "the magazine of the future at the avant-garde of the 21st century", then ZDNet, as a leading computer online magazine.

"More than 3,600 newspapers now publish on the internet", Eric K. Meyer stated in late 1997 in an essay published on the website of AJR/NewsLink. "A full 43% of all online newspapers now are based outside the United States. A year ago, only 29% of online newspapers were located abroad. Rapid growth, primarily in Canada, the United Kingdom, Norway, Brazil and Germany, has pushed the total number of non-U.S. online newspapers to 1,563. The number of U.S. newspapers online also has grown markedly, from 745 a year ago to 1,290 six months ago to 2,059 today. Outside the United States, the United Kingdom, with 294 online newspapers, and Canada, with 230, lead the way.

In Canada, every province or territory now has at least one online newspaper. Ontario leads the way with 91, Alberta has 44, and British Columbia has 43. Elsewhere in North America, Mexico has 51 online newspapers, 23 newspapers are online in Central America and 36 are online in the Caribbean. Europe is the next most wired continent for newspapers, with 728 online newspaper sites. After the United Kingdom, Norway has the next most - 53 - and Germany has 43. Asia (led by India) has 223 online newspapers, South America (led by Bolivia) has 161 and Africa (led by South Africa) has 53. Australia and other islands have 64 online newspapers."

The online versions of these newspapers brought us a wealth of information. The web provided not only news available online, but also a whole encyclopedia to help us understand them. As readers, we could click on hyperlinks to get maps, biographies, official texts, political and economic data, photographs, and audio and video coverage. We could easily access other articles on the same topic with search engines sorting out articles by date, author, t.i.tle, or subject.

1997: MULTIMEDIA CONVERGENCE AND EMPLOYMENT

= [Overview]

More and more people were using digital technology. Previously distinct information-based industries, such as printing, publis.h.i.+ng, graphic design, media, sound recording and film making, were converging into one industry, with information as a common product. This trend was named "multimedia convergence", with a ma.s.sive loss of jobs, and a serious enough issue to be tackled by the ILO (International Labor Organization) by 1997. The first ILO Symposium on Multimedia Convergence was held in January 1997 at ILO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, with employers, unionists, and government representatives from all over the world. Some partic.i.p.ants, mostly employers, demonstrated the information society was generating or would generate jobs, whereas other partic.i.p.ants, mostly unionists, demonstrated there was a rise in unemployment worldwide, that should be addressed right away through investment, innovation, vocational training, computer literacy, retraining, and fair labor rights, including for teleworkers.

= [In Depth]

As explained in the introduction of the symposium's proceedings: "With the advent of digitalization, technological convergence has been set into motion. Today all forms of information - whether based in text, sound or images - can be converted into bits and bytes for handling by computer.

Digitalization has made it possible to create, record, manipulate, combine, store, retrieve and transmit information and information-based products in ways which magnetic tape, celluloid and paper did not permit. Digitalization thus allows music, cinema and the written word to be recorded and transformed through similar processes and without distinct material supports. Previously dissimilar industries, such as publis.h.i.+ng and sound recording, now both produce CD-ROMs, rather than simply books and records. (...)

Multimedia convergence deserves our attention for reasons which go far beyond the entertainment, ma.s.s media and telecommunications industries. The technological revolution which has made multimedia convergence possible will continue apace, creating new configurations among an ever-widening range of industries. The digitalization of information processing and delivery is transforming the way financial systems operate, the way enterprises exchange information internally and externally, and the way individuals work in an increasingly electronic environment."

Held in January 1997 at the ILO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, the three-day Symposium on Multimedia Convergence intended to discuss the social and labor issues arising from this process. The industry-centred debates focused on three main concerns: (a) the information society: what it means for governments, employers and workers; (b) the convergence process: its impact on employment and work; and (c) labor relations in the information age. The purpose of these debates was "to stimulate reflection on the policies and approaches most apt to prepare our societies and especially our workforces for the turbulent transition towards an information economy."

One of the partic.i.p.ants, Peter Leisink, an a.s.sociate professor of labor studies at the Utrecht University, Netherlands, explained: "A survey of the United Kingdom book publis.h.i.+ng industry showed that proofreaders and editors have been externalized and now work as home-based teleworkers. The vast majority of them had entered self-employment, not as a first- choice option, but as a result of industry mergers, relocations and redundancies. These people should actually be regarded as casualized workers, rather than as self-employed, since they have little autonomy and tend to depend on only one publis.h.i.+ng house for their work."

Wilfred Kiboro, managing director of Nation Printers and Publishers, Kenya, made the following comments: "In content creation in the multimedia environment, it is very difficult to know who the journalist is, who the editor is, and who the technologist is that will bring it all together. At what point will telecom workers become involved as well as the people in television and other ent.i.ties that come to create new products?

Traditionally in the print media, for instance, we had printers, journalists, sales and marketing staff and so on, but now all of them are working on one floor from one desk."

Formerly, the production staff was keying in the articles, and not the editorial staff. Journalists and editors could now type in their articles online, and these articles went directly from text to layout. In book publis.h.i.+ng, digitization speeded up the editorial process, which used to be sequential, by allowing the copy editor, the image editor and the layout staff to work at the same time on the same book.

Michel Muller, secretary-general of the French Federation of Book, Paper and Communication Industry (Federation des industries du livre, du papier et de la communication), stated that, in France, jobs in this industry fell from 110,000 to 90,000 in the last decade (1987-1996), with expensive social plans to re-train and re-employ the 20,000 people who lost their jobs.

He also explained that, "if the technological developments really created new jobs, as had been suggested, then it might have been better to invest the money in reliable studies about what jobs were being created and which ones were being lost, rather than in social plans which often created artificial jobs. These studies should highlight the new skills and qualifications in demand as the technological convergence process broke down the barriers between the printing industry, journalism and other vehicles of information. Another problem caused by convergence was the trend towards owners.h.i.+p concentration. A few big groups controlled not only the bulk of the print media, but a wide range of other media, and thus posed a threat to pluralism in expression. Various tax advantages enjoyed by the press today should be re-examined and adapted to the new realities facing the press and multimedia enterprises. Managing all the social and societal issues raised by new technologies required widespread agreement and consensus. Collective agreements were vital, since neither individual negotiations nor the market alone could sufficiently settle these matters."

Quite theoretical compared to the unionists' concerns was the answer of Walter Durling, director of AT&T Global Information Solutions (United States): "Technology would not change the core of human relations. More sophisticated means of communicating, new mechanisms for negotiating, and new types of conflicts would all arise, but the relations.h.i.+ps between workers and employers themselves would continue to be the same.

When film was invented, people had been afraid that it could bring theatre to an end. That has not happened. When television was developed, people had feared that it would do away cinemas, but it had not. One should not be afraid of the future. Fear of the future should not lead us to stifle creativity with regulations. Creativity was needed to generate new employment.

The spirit of enterprise had to be reinforced with the new technology in order to create jobs for those who had been displaced. Problems should not be antic.i.p.ated, but tackled when they arose." In short, humanity shouldn't fear technology.

In fact, employees were not so much afraid of technology as they were afraid of losing their jobs. In 1996, unemployment was already significant in any field, which was not the case when film and television were invented. What would be the balance between job creation and lay-off in the near future?

Unions were struggling worldwide to promote the creation of jobs through investment, innovation, vocational training, computer literacy, retraining for new jobs in digital technology, fair conditions for labor contracts and collective agreements, defense of copyright for the re-use of articles from the print media to the web, protection of workers in the artistic field, and defense of teleworkers as workers having full rights. The European Commission was expecting to have 10 million teleworkers in Europe by the year 2000, which would represent 20% of teleworkers worldwide.

Despite unions' efforts, would the situation become as tragic as suggested in a note of the symposium's proceedings? "Some fear a future in which individuals will be forced to struggle for survival in an electronic jungle. And the survival mechanisms which have been developed in recent decades, such as relatively stable employment relations, collective agreements, employee representation, employer-provided job training, and jointly funded social security schemes, may be sorely tested in a world where work crosses borders at the speed of light."

Twelve years later, outsourcing has become a "standard" in information technology, to cut the costs. How many companies care about fair labor conditions for the employees of their outsourcing partners?

1998: LIBRARIES TAKE OVER THE WEB

= [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 ma.n.u.script 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, ma.n.u.scripts, 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 doc.u.ment 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 Naude, whose 'Advis pour dresser une bibliotheque' (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 partic.i.p.ated 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 (Bibliotheque 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 doc.u.ment 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.