Libraries

eBooks: 1999 – Librarians in cyberspace

History
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To help their patrons deal with the internet, to select and organize information for them, to create and maintain websites, to check specialized databases and to update online catalogs became daily tasks for librarians. Here are two examples, with Peter Raggett at the Central Library of OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) and Bruno [...]

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eBooks: 1997 – A portal for European national libraries

History
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Gabriel — an acronym for “Gateway and Bridge to Europe’s National Libraries” — was launched in January 1997 as a common portal giving access to the internet services of the participating libraries. As stated on its website: “Gabriel also recalls Gabriel Naudé, whose ‘Advis pour dresser une bibliothèque’ (Paris, 1627) is one of the earliest [...]

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eBooks: 1995 – Libraries launched websites

History
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In the mid-1990s, libraries started their own websites as a virtual window for their patrons and beyond, with an online catalog and a digital library. In his book “Books in My Life”, published by the Library of Congress in 1985, Robert Downs, a librarian, wrote: “My lifelong love affair with books and reading continues unaffected [...]

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Libraries check out the eBook

News

Across the U.S., thousands of libraries are embracing eBooks. No longer the familiar home of tomes and periodicals only, these foundations are now using new technology for more than just computerizing their catalogues. Libraries, like so many other businesses of the book, are eager to attract the digitally savvy new generation. This downloadable wave has [...]

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No Contest: eBooks Are Winning!

News

The pundits all ask, “Why aren’t eBooks a success?” But their queries show a ridiculous bias when their form and content always come down to the dollar. The almighty dollar. A Reply To All Those Pundits by Michael S. Hart. What If A New Product Just Doesn’t Cost Anything? If the pundits had asked the [...]

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Michael Hart Interviewed on NPR about Digital Libraries

PG News

This coming weekend an interview with Michael Hart about Digital Libraries will be broadcast on NPR [National Public Radio]. In this interview he was also joined by Brewster Kahle (The Internet Archive) and Michael Keller (Librarian of Stanford). Michael specifically talks about wearing Digital Libraries on a necklace, Terabyte hard drives and creating a Billion [...]

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