the costs. How many companies
care about fair labor conditions for the employees of their
outsourcing partners?

1998: LIBRARIES TAKE OVER THE WEB

= [Overview]

The first library website was the one created by the Helsinki
City Library in Finland, which went live in February 1994. Four
years later, in 1998, more and more traditional libraries had a
website as a new "virtual" window for their patrons and beyond.
Patrons could check opening hours, browse the online catalog,
and surf on a broad selection of websites on various topics.
Libraries developed digital libraries alongside their standard
collections, for a large audience to be able to access their
specialized, old, local and regional collections, including
images and sound. Librarians could now fulfill two goals that
used to be in contradiction - preservation (on shelves) and
communication (on the internet). Library treasures went online,
like Beowulf on the website of the British Library. Beowulf is
the earliest known narrative poem in English, and one of the
most famous works of Anglo-Saxon poetry. The British Library
holds the only known manuscript of Beowulf, dated circa 1000,
and digitized it for the world to enjoy.

= Libraries create websites

Libraries began creating websites as a "virtual" window, as
well as digital libraries stemming from their print
collections. Thousands of public works, literary and scientific
articles, pictures and sound tracks became available on the
screen for free.

On the one hand, books were taken out of their shelves only
once to be scanned. On the other hand, books could easily be
accessed anywhere at any time, without the need to go to the
library and struggle through a lengthy process to access the
original books, because of reduced opening hours, forms to fill
out, safety concerns for rare and fragile books, and shortage
of staff. Some researchers still remember the unfailing
patience and an out-of-the-ordinary determination they needed
to finally get to a given book in some cases. People could now
access digital facsimiles, and access the original books only
when needed.

Before broadband internet became mainstream, full-screen images
were quite long to appear on the screen. After enthusiastically
posting large image files, librarians decided to post small
images that people could either see as is, or click on to get a
larger format.

Some amazing image collections went online, for example
America