History

eBooks: 2011 – The ebook in ten points

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These ten quotes are excerpts from email interviews. Their authors are Michael Hart, John Mark Ockerbloom, Robert Beard, Jean-Paul, Nicolas Pewny, Marc Autret, Pierre Schweitzer, Denis Zwirn, Catherine Domain and Henk Slettenhaar. August 1998 “We consider etext to be a new medium, with no real relationship to paper, other than presenting the same material, but […]

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eBooks: 2010 – A UNESCO atlas for endangered languages

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In 2010, UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) launched a free Interactive Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger. The online edition is a complement of the print edition (3rd edition, 2010), edited by Christopher Moseley, and available in English, French and Spanish, with previous editions in 1996 and 2001. 2,473 languages were […]

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eBooks: 2009 – 6,909 living languages in the Ethnologue

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eBooks: 2009 - 6,909 living languages in the Ethnologue

6,909 living languages were cataloged in the 16th edition (2009) of “The Ethnologue: Languages of the World”, an encyclopedic reference work freely available on the web since 1996, with a print book for sale. As stated by Barbara Grimes, its editor from 1971 to 2000, the Ethnologue is “a catalog of the languages of the […]

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eBooks: 2001 – Broadband became the norm

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Henk Slettenhaar has extensive knowledge of communication technology, with a long career in Geneva, Switzerland, and California. Ten years after getting a broadband connection at home, he reads ebooks on a Kindle or an iPad. Henk joined CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Geneva  in 1958 to work with the first digital computer. He was […]

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eBooks: 2000 – Cotres.net, works of digital literature

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A writer and musician, Jean-Paul has offered beautiful works of digital literature, while searching how hyperlinks could expand his writing towards new directions. In October 1998, Jean-Paul switched from being a print author to being an hypermedia author, and created cotres.net (“cotres” could be translated by “cutters” in English) as a website “telling stories in […]

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eBooks: 2000 – Experiments by best-selling authors

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In 2000, Stephen King was the first best-selling author to launch digital experiments, followed by Frederick Forsyth and Arturo Pérez-Reverte in Europe and many other authors then, for example Paolo Coehlo in Brazil. Stephen King As a first step, Stephen King distributed in March 2000 his short story “Riding the Bullet” as an electronic file, […]

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eBooks: 2000 – The web portal yourDictionary

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Five years before co-founding yourDictionary.com in February 2000, as the portal for all languages without any exception, Robert Beard created the website A Web of Online Dictionaries (WOD) in 1995. Robert Beard was a language teacher at Bucknell University, in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. In September 1998, his website provided an index of 800 online dictionaries in […]

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eBooks: 1999 – The internet as a novel character

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eBooks: 1999 - The internet as a novel character

The internet is one of the characters of Alain Bron’s second novel, “Sanguine sur toile”, available in print from Le Choucas in 1999, and in PDF from 00h00 in 2000. This novel won the Lions Club International Prize in 2000. About the novel Alain Bron wrote in November 1999 in an email interview: “In French, […]

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eBooks: 1999 – The Ulysses Bookstore on the web

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Founded in 1971 by Catherine Domain in Paris, France, Librairie Ulysse (Ulysses Bookstore) is the oldest bookstore in the world dedicated only to travel. The bookstore launched its website in 1999 and a small publishing venture in 2010. Nested on Ile Saint-Louis surrounded by the river Seine, Librairie Ulysse has offered 20,000 books, maps and […]

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eBooks: 1999 – Librarians in cyberspace

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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: 1998 – The first ebook readers

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How about a book-sized electronic device that could store many books at once? The first ebook readers were the Rocket eBook and the SoftBook Reader, launched in Silicon Valley in 1998. These dedicated electronic readers were the size of a (large and thick) book, with a battery, a black and white LCD screen, and a […]

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