Technology and Books for All Part 5

I interviewed Peter Raggett, a digital librarian at OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development), and Bruno Didier, a digital librarian at Inst.i.tute Pasteur. Here are some excerpts.

= At the OECD Library

What is OECD? "The OECD is a club of like-minded countries. It is rich, in that OECD countries produce two thirds of the world's goods and services, but it is not an exclusive club. Essentially, members.h.i.+p is limited only by a country's commitment to a market economy and a pluralistic democracy. The core of original members has expanded from Europe and North America to include j.a.pan, Australia, New Zealand, Finland, Mexico, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Korea. And there are many more contacts with the rest of the world through programmes with countries in the former Soviet bloc, Asia, Latin America - contacts which, in some cases, may lead to members.h.i.+p."

(excerpt from the 1998 website)

The Center for Doc.u.mentation and Information (CDI) of OECD provides information to OECD agents in support of their research work. In 1998, there were 60,000 monographs and 2,500 periodicals. The CDI also provides information in electronic format from databases, CD-ROMs and the internet.

Peter Raggett, head of CDI, has been a professional librarian for nearly twenty years, first working in UK government libraries and then at the OECD since 1994. He has used the internet since 1996. He built up the CDI Intranet pages, which became a main tool for the staff.

Peter wrote in June 1998: "At the OECD Library we have collected together several hundred World Wide Web sites and have put links to them on the OECD Intranet. They are sorted by subject and each site has a short annotation giving some information about it. The researcher can then see if it is possible that the site contains the desired information. This is adding value to the site references and in this way the Central Library has built up a virtual reference desk on the OECD network. As well as the annotated links, this virtual reference desk contains pages of references to articles, monographs and websites relevant to several projects currently being researched at the OECD, network access to CD-ROMs, and a monthly list of new acquisitions. The Library catalogue will soon be available for searching on the Intranet.

The reference staff at the OECD Library uses the Internet for a good deal of their work. Often an academic working paper will be on the web and will be available for full-text downloading. We are currently investigating supplementing our subscriptions to certain of our periodicals with access to the electronic versions on the internet."

Peter added: "The internet has provided researchers with a vast database of information. The problem for them is to find what they are seeking. Never has the information overload been so obvious as when one tries to find information on a topic by searching the internet. When one uses a search engine like Lycos or AltaVista or a directory like Yahoo!, it soon becomes clear that it can be very difficult to find valuable sites on a given topic. These search mechanisms work well if one is searching for something very precise, such as information on a person who has an unusual name, but they produce a confusing number of references if one is searching for a topic which can be quite broad.

Try and search the web for Russia AND transport to find statistics on the use of trains, planes and buses in Russia. The first references you will find are freight-forwarding firms who have business connections with Russia."

What about the future? "The internet is impinging on many peoples'

lives, and information managers are the best people to help researchers around the labyrinth. The internet is just in its infancy and we are all going to be witnesses to its growth and refinement. (...) Information managers have a large role to play in searching and arranging the information on the internet. I expect that there will be an expansion in internet use for education and research. This means that libraries will have to create virtual libraries where students can follow a course offered by an inst.i.tution at the other side of the world. Personally, I see myself becoming more and more a virtual librarian. My clients may not meet me face-to-face but instead will contact me by e-mail, telephone or fax, and I will do the research and send them the results electronically."

= At the Inst.i.tute Pasteur Library

In 1999, Bruno Didier was the webmaster of the Inst.i.tute Pasteur Library. "The Pasteur Inst.i.tutes are exceptional observatories for studying infectious and parasite-borne diseases. They are wedded to the solving of practical public health problems, and hence carry out research programmes which are highly original because of the complementary nature of the investigations carried out: clinical research, epidemiological surveys and basic research work. Just a few examples from the long list of major topics of the Inst.i.tutes are: malaria, tuberculosis, AIDS, yellow fever, dengue and poliomyelitis."

(excerpt from the 1999 website)

In August 1999, Bruno wrote about his work as a webmaster: "The main aim of the Pasteur Inst.i.tute Library website is to serve the Inst.i.tute itself and its a.s.sociated bodies. It supports applications that have become essential in such a big organization: bibliographic databases, cataloguing, ordering of doc.u.ments and of course access to online periodicals (presently more than 100). It is also a window for our different departments, at the Inst.i.tute but also elsewhere in France and abroad. It plays a big part in doc.u.mentation exchanges with the inst.i.tutes in the worldwide Pasteur network. I am trying to make it an interlink adapted to our needs for exploration and use of the internet.

The website has existed in its present form since 1996 and its audience is steadily increasing. I build and maintain the web pages and monitor them regularly. I am also responsible for training users, which you can see from my pages. The web is an excellent place for training and is included in most ongoing discussions about training."

What about the future of librarians? "Our relations.h.i.+p with both the information and the users is what changes. We are increasingly becoming mediators, and perhaps to a lesser extent 'curators'. My present activity is typical of this new situation: I am working to provide quick access to information and to create effective means of communication, but I also train people to use these new tools. I think the future of our job is tied to cooperation and use of common resources. It is certainly an old project, but it is really the first time we have had the means to set it up."

1998: MULTILINGUAL WEB

[Overview]

In 1998, Randy Hobler was a consultant in internet marketing for Globalink, a company specializing in language translation software and services. Randy wrote in September 1998: "85% of the content of the web in 1998 is in English and going down. This trend is driven not only by more websites and users in non-English-speaking countries, but by increasing localization of company and organization sites, and increasing use of machine translation to/from various languages to translate websites. (...) Because the internet has no national boundaries, the organization of users is bounded by other criteria driven by the medium itself. In terms of multilingualism, you have virtual communities, for example, of what I call 'Language Nations'...

all those people on the internet wherever they may be, for whom a given language is their native language. Thus, the Spanish Language nation includes not only Spanish and Latin American users, but millions of Hispanic users in the US, as well as odd places like Spanish-speaking Morocco."

[In Depth (published in 2000, updated in 2004)]

In 1998, other languages than English began spreading on the web. In fact, main non-English languages were present nearly from the start.

But most of the web was in English. Then people from all over the world began having access to the internet, and posting pages in their own languages. The percentage of the English language began to slowly decrease from nearly 100% to 90%.

In 1998, Randy Hobler was an internet marketing consultant for Globalink, a company specialized in language translation software and services. Previously, Randy worked as a consultant for IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Burroughs Wellcome, Pepsi, Heublein, and others.

Randy wrote in September 1998: "Because the internet has no national boundaries, the organization of users is bounded by other criteria driven by the medium itself. In terms of multilingualism, you have virtual communities, for example, of what I call 'Language Nations'...

all those people on the internet wherever they may be, for whom a given language is their native language. Thus, the Spanish Language nation includes not only Spanish and Latin American users, but millions of Hispanic users in the US, as well as odd places like Spanish-speaking Morocco."

In 1999, Jean-Pierre Cloutier was the editor of Chroniques de Cyberie, a weekly report of internet news. Jean-Pierre wrote in August 1999: "The web is going to grow in these non English-speaking regions. So we have to take into account the technical aspects of the medium if we want to reach these 'new' users. I think it is a pity there are so few translations of important doc.u.ments and essays published on the web -- from English into other languages and vice-versa. (...) The recent introduction of the internet in regions where it is spreading raises questions which would be good to read about. When will Spanish-speaking communications theorists and those speaking other languages be translated?"

In 1999, Marcel Grangier was the head of the French Section of the Swiss Federal Government's Central Linguistic Services, which meant he was in charge of organizing translation matters for the Swiss government. Marcel wrote in January 1999: "We can see multilingualism on the internet as a happy and irreversible inevitability. So we have to laugh at the doomsayers who only complain about the supremacy of English. Such supremacy is not wrong in itself, because it is mainly based on statistics (more PCs per inhabitant, more people speaking English, etc.). The answer is not to 'fight' English, much less whine about it, but to build more sites in other languages. As a translation service, we also recommend that websites be multilingual. The increasing number of languages on the internet is inevitable and can only boost multicultural exchanges. For this to happen in the best possible circ.u.mstances, we still need to develop tools to improve compatibility. Fully coping with accents and other characters is only one example of what can be done."

In 1998, Henri Slettenhaar was a professor at Webster University, Geneva, Swizerland. He insisted regularly on the need of bilingual websites, in the original language and in English. He wrote in December 1998: "I see multilingualism as a very important issue. Local communities that are on the web should princ.i.p.ally use the local language for their information. If they want to present it to the world community as well, it should be in English too. I see a real need for bilingual websites. I am delighted there are so many offerings in the original language now. I much prefer to read the original with difficulty than getting a bad translation."

He added in August 1999: "There are two main categories in my opinion.

The first one is the global outreach for business and information. Here the language is definitely English first, with local versions where appropriate. The second one is local information of all kinds in the most remote places. If the information is meant for people of an ethnic and/or language group, it should be in that language first with perhaps a summary in English. We have seen lately how important these local websites are -- in Kosovo and Turkey, to mention just the most recent ones. People were able to get information about their relatives through these sites."

He added in August 2000: "Multilingualism has expanded greatly. Many e-commerce websites are multilingual now and there are companies that sell products which make localization possible (adaptation of websites to national markets)."

Non English-speaking users reached 50% in Summer 2000. According to the company Global Reach, they were 52.5% in Summer 2001, 57% in December 2001, 59.8% in April 2002, 64.4% in September 2003 (including 34.9% non-English-speaking Europeans and 29.4% Asians) and 64.2% in March 2004 (including 37.9% non-English-speaking Europeans and 33% Asians).

1999: OPEN EBOOK FORMAT

[Overview]

In 1999, there were nearly as many eBook formats as eBooks, with every company and organization creating its own format for its own eBook reader and its own electronic device. The publis.h.i.+ng industry felt the need to work on a common format for eBooks and and published in September 1999 the first version of the Open eBook (OeB) format, an eBook format based on XML (eXtensible Markup Language) and defined by the Open eBook Publication Structure (OeBPS). The Open eBook Forum was created in January 2000 to develop the OeB format and OeBPS specifications. Since 2000, most eBook formats were derived from - or are compatible with the OeB format. In April 2005, the Open eBook Forum became the International Digital Publis.h.i.+ng Forum (IDPF), and the OeB format became the ePub format. The ePub format is one of the standards for the digital publis.h.i.+ng industry.

1999: DIGITAL AUTHORS

[Overview]

Like many artists, Jean-Paul began exploring the internet and searching what hyperlinks could offer to expand his writing towards new directions. He switched from being a print author to being an hypermedia author, and created Cotres furtifs (Furtive Cutters), a website telling stories in 3D. He also enjoyed the freedom given by online self-publis.h.i.+ng, and wrote in August 1999: "The internet allows me to do without intermediaries, such as record companies, publishers and distributors. Most of all, it allows me to crystallize what I have in my head: the print medium (desktop publis.h.i.+ng, in fact) only allows me to partly do that." He added in June 2000: "Surfing the web is like radiating in all directions (I am interested in something and I click on all the links on a home page) or like jumping around (from one click to another, as the links appear). You can do this in the written media, of course. But the difference is striking. So the internet didn't change my life, but it did change how I write. You don't write the same way for a website as you do for a script or a play."

[In Depth (published in 2000)]

I interviewed Murray Suid, a writer of educational books, who was living in Palo Alto, California. Back in Paris, I interviewed Jean-Paul, an hypermedia author, who wrote some interesting comments about digital literature.

= Educational Books

In 1998, Murray Suid was living in Palo Alto, in the heart of Silicon Valley. He was writing educational books, books for kids, multimedia scripts and screenplays. He was among the first to choose a solution that many authors would soon adopt. He explained in September 1998: "If a book can be web-extended (living partly in cybers.p.a.ce), then an author can easily update and correct it, whereas otherwise the author would have to wait a long time for the next edition, if indeed a next edition ever came out. (...) I do not know if I will publish books on the web -- as opposed to publis.h.i.+ng paper books. Probably that will happen when books become multimedia. (I currently am helping develop multimedia learning materials, and it is a form of teaching that I like a lot -- blending text, movies, audio, graphics, and -- when possible -- interactivity)."

Murray added in August 1999: "In addition to 'web-extending' books, we are now web-extending our multimedia (CD-ROM) products -- to update and enrich them." A few months later, he added: "Our company -- EDVantage Software -- has become an internet company instead of a multimedia (CD-ROM) company. We deliver educational material online to students and teachers."

= Hypermedia Writing

In 1999, Jean-Paul, an hypermedia author, was the webmaster of cotres.net, a site telling stories in 3D. He really enjoyed the freedom given by online publis.h.i.+ng. He wrote in August 1999: "The internet allows me to do without intermediaries, such as record companies, publishers and distributors. Most of all, it allows me to crystallize what I have in my head: the print medium (desktop-publis.h.i.+ng, in fact) only allows me to partly do that. Then the intermediaries will take over and I will have to look somewhere else, a place where the gra.s.s is greener..."