isted on a
'books page', back issues of serials are often bound and reissued as
hardbound 'books'.)"

The Online Books Page participated in the Experimental Search System of
the Library of Congress. It also worked with The Universal Library
Project, hosted at Carnegie Mellon University.

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

1993: PDF

[Overview]

PDF (Portable Document Format) was conceived by Adobe in 1992, launched
in June 1993 with Adobe Acrobat software, and perfected over 15 years
as the global standard for distribution and viewing of information. It
"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." (excerpt from
the website) Adobe Acrobat gives the tools to create and view PDF files
and is available in many languages and for many platforms (Macintosh,
Windows, Unix, etc.). Ten years later, over 500 million copies of
PDF-based Adobe Reader (formerly Acrobat Reader, until May 2003) have
been downloaded worldwide. Approximately 10% of the documents on the
internet are available in PDF.

1994: LIBRARY WEBSITES

[Overview]

The first library website was the one created by the Helsinki City
Library in Finland, which went live in February 1994. Traditional
libraries began using a website as a new virtual window for their
patrons and beyond. Patrons could check opening hours, browse the
online catalog, or surf on a broad selection of websites on various
topics, depending on their needs. Libraries also began developing
digital libraries alongside their standard collections, for a large
audience to be able to access their specialized, old, local and
regional collections. Librarians could now fulfill two goals that used
to be in contradiction - book preservation (on shelves) and book
communication (on the internet).

[In Depth (published in 1999)]

The first library website was the one created by the Helsinki City
Library in Finland, which went live in February 1994. Many libraries
began developing a digital library alongside their standard
collections. Digital libraries a