utting
French-language texts online. A specific page has offered an extensive
selection of other digital libraries worldwide, with relevant links.

1994 > NAP used the web as a marketing tool

NAP (National Academy Press) was the first publisher in 1994 to post
the full text of some books, for free, with the authors' consent, and
to use the web as a marketing tool to sell print versions. NAP was
created by the National Academy of Sciences to publish its own reports
and the ones of the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of
Medicine, and the National Research Council. In 1994, NAP was
publishing 200 new books a year in science, engineering, and health.
Oddly enough, there was no drop in sales--on the contrary, sales
increased. In 1998, the new new NAP Reading Room offered 1,000 entire
books, available online for free in various formats: "image" format,
HTML format and PDF format.

1995 > The MIT Press followed the NAP

In 1995, MIT Press was publishing 200 new books per year and 40
journals, in science and technology, architecture, social theory,
economics, cognitive science, and computational science. MIT Press also
decided to put a number of books online for free, as "a long-term
commitment to the efficient and creative use of new technologies".
Sales of print books with a free online version increased. These
initiatives were praised by other publishers, but they were reluctant
to launch a similar experience because of the cost of posting online
thousands of pages, problems linked to copyright, and free versions
"competing" with print sales.

1995 > The Internet Dictionary Project

Tyler Chambers created the Human-Languages Page in May 1994. Tyler's
other language-related project was the Internet Dictionary Project
(IDP), launched in 1995. The IDP was a collaborative project to set up
free online dictionaries for French, German, Italian, Latin, Portuguese
and Spanish. Tyler ran out of time to manage this project, and removed
the ability to update the dictionaries in January 2007. People can
still search the available dictionaries or download the archived files.

1995 > NetGlos, a collaborative glossary

Launched in 1995 by the WorldWide Language Institute (WWLI), an
institute providing language instruction via the web, NetGlos (which
stands for: Multilingual Glossary of Internet Terminology) has been
compiled as a voluntary, collaborative project by a number of
translators and other language profe