The eBook is 40 (1971-2011) Part 2

# The Etext Archives

The Etext Archives were founded in 1992 by Paul Southworth, and hosted on the website of the University of Michigan. They were "home to electronic texts of all kinds, from the sacred to the profane, and from the political to the personal", without judging their content.

There were six sections in 1998: (a) "E-zines": electronic periodicals from the professional to the personal; (b) "Politics": political zines, essays, and home pages of political groups; (c) "Fiction": publications of amateur authors; (d) "Religion": mainstream and off-beat religious texts; (e) "Poetry": an eclectic mix of mostly amateur poetry; and (f) "Quartz": the archive formerly hosted at quartz.rutgers.edu.

As recalled on the website the same year: "The web was just a glimmer [in 1992], gopher was the new hot technology, and FTP was still the standard information retrieval protocol for the vast majority of users.

The origin of the project has caused numerous people to a.s.sociate it with the University of Michigan, although in fact there has never been an official relationship and the project is supported entirely by volunteer labor and contributions. The equipment is wholly owned by the project maintainers. The project was started in response to the lack of organized archiving of political doc.u.ments, periodicals and discussions disseminated via Usenet on newsgroups such as alt.activism, misc.activism.progressive, and alt.society.anarchy. The alt.politics.radical-left group came later and was also a substantial source of both materials and regular contributors. Not long thereafter, electronic zines (e-zines) began their rapid proliferation on the internet, and it was clear that these materials suffered from the same lack of coordinated collection and preservation, not to mention the fact that the lines between e-zines (which at the time were mostly related to hacking, phreaking, and internet anarchism) and political materials on the internet were fuzzy enough that most e-zines fit the original mission of The Etext Archives. One thing led to another, and e-zines of all kinds -- many on various cultural topics unrelated to politics -- invaded the archives in significant volume."

# The E-Zine-List

The E-Zine-List was founded by John Labovitz in summer 1993 as a directory of e-zines around the world, accessible via FTP, gopher, email, the web, and other services. The list was updated monthly.

How did the E-Zine-List begin? On the website, John explained he originally wanted to publicize the print zine Crash by making an electronic version of it. Looking for directories, he only found the discussion group alt.zines and archives like The Well and The Etext Archives. Then came the idea of an organized directory. He began with twelve tiles listed manually in a word processor. Then he wrote his own database.

3,045 zines were listed in November 1998. John wrote on the website: "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 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'."

After maintaining the list during years, John pa.s.sed the torch to others.

1993 > THE ONLINE BOOKS PAGE

[Summary]

Founded in 1993 by John Mark Ockerbloom when he was a student at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), the Online Books Page is "a website that facilitates access to books that are freely readable over the internet." John Mark Ockerbloom first maintained this page on the website of the School of Computer Science of Carnegie Mellon University. In 1999, he moved it at the University of Pennsylvania Library, after being hired as a digital library planner and researcher. The Online Books Page offered links to 12,000 books in 1999, 20,000 books in 2003 (including 4,000 books published by women), 25,000 books in 2006, 30,000 books in 2008 (including 7,000 books from Project Gutenberg) and 35,000 books in 2010.

In 1993, John Mark Ockerbloom created The Online Books Page as "a website that facilitates access to books that are freely readable over the internet."

The web was still in its infancy, with Mosaic as its first browser.

John Mark Ockerbloom was a graduate student at the School of Computer Science (CS) of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania).

Five years later, in September 1998, John Mark wrote: "I was the original webmaster here at CMU CS, and started our local web in 1993.

The local web included pages pointing to various locally developed resources, and originally The Online Books Page was just one of these pages, containing pointers to some books put online by some of the people in our department. (Robert Stockton had made web versions of some of Project Gutenberg's texts.) After a while, people started asking about books at other sites, and I noticed that a number of sites (not just Gutenberg, but also Wiretap and some other places) had books online, and that it would be useful to have some listing of all of them, so that you could go to one place to download or view books from all over the net. So that's how my index got started.

I eventually gave up the webmaster job in 1996, but kept The Online Books Page, since by then I'd gotten very interested in the great potential the net had for making literature available to a wide audience. At this point there are so many books going online that I have a hard time keeping up. But I hope to keep up my online books works in some form or another. I am very excited about the potential of the internet as a ma.s.s communication medium in the coming years. I'd also like to stay involved, one way or another, in making books available to a wide audience for free via the net, whether I make this explicitly part of my professional career, or whether I just do it as a spare-time volunteer."

In 1998, there was an index of 7,000 books that could be browsed by author, t.i.tle or subject. There were also pointers to significant directories and archives of online texts, and to special exhibits.

As stated on the website at the time: "Along with books, The Online Books Page is also now listing major archives of serials (such as magazines, published journals, and newspapers) (...). Serials can be at least as important as books in library research. Serials are often the first places that new research and scholarship appear. They are sources for firsthand accounts of contemporary events and commentary. They are also often the first (and sometimes the only) place that quality literature appears. (For those who might still quibble about serials being listed on a 'books page', back issues of serials are often bound and reissued as hardbound 'books'.)"

In 1999, after graduating from Carnegie Mellon with a Ph.D. in computer science, John Mark was hired as a digital library planner and researcher at the University of Pennsylvania Library. He also moved The Online Books Page there, kept it as clear and simple, and went on expanding it.

The Online Books Page offered links to 12,000 books in 1999, 20,000 books in 2003 (including 4,000 books published by women), 25,000 books in 2006, 30,000 books in 2008 (including 7,000 books from Project Gutenberg) and 35,000 books in 2010. The books "have been auth.o.r.ed, placed online, and hosted by a wide variety of individuals and groups throughout the world". The FAQ listed copyright information about most countries in the world, with links to further reading.

1993 > PDF, FROM PAST TO PRESENT

[Summary]

From California, Adobe launched PDF (Portable Doc.u.ment Format) in June 1993, along with Acrobat Reader (free, to read PDFs) and Adobe Acrobat (for a fee, to create PDFs). As stated on the website, PDF "lets you capture and view robust information from any application, on any computer system and share it with anyone around the world." As the "veteran" format, PDF was perfected over the years as a global standard for distribution and viewing of information. Acrobat Reader was available in several languages, for various platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, Palm OS, Pocket PC, Symbian OS, etc.), and for various devices (computer, PDA, smartphone). In May 2003, Acrobat Reader (5th version) merged with Acrobat eBook Reader (2nd version) to become Adobe Reader, starting with version 6, which could read both standard PDF files and secure PDF files of copyrighted books.

From California, Adobe launched PDF (Portable Doc.u.ment Format) in June 1993, along with Acrobat Reader (free, to read PDFs) and Adobe Acrobat (for a fee, to make PDFs).

As stated on the website, PDF "lets you capture and view robust information from any application, on any computer system and share it with anyone around the world. Individuals, businesses, and government agencies everywhere trust and rely on Adobe PDF to communicate their ideas and vision."

As the "veteran" format, PDF was perfected over the years as a global standard for distribution and viewing of information. Acrobat Reader and Adobe Acrobat gave the tools to create and view PDF files in several languages and for several platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux).

In August 2000, Adobe bought Gla.s.sbook, a software company intended for publishers, booksellers, distributors and libraries. Adobe also partnered with Amazon.com and Barnes & n.o.ble.com to offer ebooks for Acrobat Reader and Gla.s.sbook Reader.

# Two new software

In January 2001, Adobe launched Acrobat eBook Reader (free) and the Adobe Content Server (for a fee).

Acrobat eBook Reader was meant to read PDF files of copyrighted books, while adding notes and bookmarks, visualizing the book covers in a personal library, and browsing a dictionary.

The Adobe Content Server was intended for publishers and distributors, for the packaging, protection, distribution and sale of PDF copyrighted books, while managing their access with DRM according to the copyright holder's instructions, for example allowing or not the printing and loan of a book. The Adobe Content Server was replaced with the Adobe LiveCycle Policy Server in November 2004.

In April 2001, Adobe partnered with Amazon, for Amazon's eBookStore to include 2,000 copyrighted books for Acrobat eBook Reader. These were t.i.tles of major publishers, travel guides and children books.

Acrobat Reader was then available for PDAs, beginning with the Palm Pilot in May 2001 and the Pocket PC in December 2001.

# Adobe Reader

From 1993 to 2003, according to Adobe's website, over 500 million copies of Acrobat Reader were downloaded worldwide. In 2003, Acrobat Reader was available in many languages and for many platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, Palm OS, Pocket PC, Symbian OS, etc.). Approximately 10% of the doc.u.ments on the internet were available in PDF. PDF was also the main format for ebooks.

In May 2003, Acrobat Reader (5th version) merged with Acrobat eBook Reader (2nd version) to become Adobe Reader, starting with version 6, which could read both standard PDF files and secure PDF files of copyrighted books.

In late 2003, Adobe opened its own online bookstore, the Digital Media Store, with PDF t.i.tles from major publishers, for example HarperCollins, Random House and Simon & Schuster, and electronic versions of newspapers and magazines, for example The New York Times or Popular Science. Adobe also launched Adobe eBooks Central as a service to read, publish, sell and lend ebooks, and Adobe eBook Library as a prototype digital library.

After being a proprietary format, PDF was officially released as an open standard in July 2008, and published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as ISO 32000-1:2008.

1994 > THE INTERNET AS A MARKETING TOOL

[Summary]

Some publishers decided to use the web as a marketing tool to promote their books among the 50,000 new books published per year in the U.S.

NAP (National Academy Press) was the first publisher in 1994 to post the full text of some books on its website, for free, with the authors'

consent. It was followed by MIT Press (MIT: Ma.s.sachusetts Inst.i.tute of Technology) in 1995. Oddly enough, there was no drop in sales. On the contrary, sales increased. These initiatives were praised by a number of other publishers, who were reluctant to do the same, for three reasons: the cost of posting thousands of pages online, problems linked to copyright, and what they saw as a "compet.i.tion" between digital versions for free and print versions for a fee.

Some publishers decided to post the full text of some books for free on their websites, and to use the web as a marketing tool to sell the print versions.