Marie Lebert

“ The massive arrival of electronic texts on the Web is a real problem for applying the rules relating to intellectual property. Digital libraries, for example, would like to post commercial documents but can't do so yet, until there is a system allowing the surfer to pay the equivalent royalties. With a few clicks, any text or article posted on the Internet can be very easily retrieved and copied - much more easily than by photocopying - without its author being paid for the use of his text. And what about all the hyperlinks giving access to all kinds of documents from one website? ”

“ To do our jobs. To be members of the digital community. And far from teaching a body of knowledge that will last for life, the new generation of information professionals will be required to search out, add to, critique, 'play with', and daily update information, and to make available the constant changes that are occurring."
The Internet will not do away with the print media, the cinema, the radio or the television. As a new information and communication medium, it is creating its own space while adapting itself to the other media, and vice versa. ”

“ Copyright is one of the keys to the future information society. If a publishing house which offers the journalist work, even on an on-line service, is not able to manage and control the use of the resulting product, then it will not be possible to finance further investments in the necessary technology. Without that financing, the future becomes less positive and jobs can suffer. If, however, publishers see that they are able to make multiple use of their investment, then obviously this is beneficial for all. ”

“ The Internet is revolutionary, but not Utopian.
The Net is an extraordinary communications tool that provides a range of new opportunities for people, communities, businesses, and government. Yet as cyberspace becomes more populated, it increasingly resembles society at large, in all its complexity. For every empowering or enlightening aspect of the wired life, there will also be dimensions that are malicious, perverse, or rather ordinary. ”

“ From my point of view, the greatest contribution of the Internet to the print media is that people no longer run after information, but that the information is there, available on their screen, and the quantity of this information is really impressive. ”

“ Concerning the relationship with other media, I think we need to look backwards. Contrary to the words of alarmists in previous times, radio didn't kill music or the entertainment industry any more than the cinema did. Television didn't kill radio or cinema. Nor did home videos. When a new medium arrives, it makes some room for itself, the others adjust, there is a transition period, then a 'convergence'.
What is different with the Internet is the interactive dimension of the medium and its possible impact. ”

“ Peter Raggett, Deputy-Head of the OECD Main Library, made the following comments in his e-mail of June 18, 1998:
"The Internet has provided researchers with a vast database of information. The problem for them is to find what they are seeking. Never has the 'information overload' been so obvious as when one tries to find information on a topic by searching the Internet. Information managers have a large role to play in searching and arranging the information on the Internet. ”

“ Any writer can create a website, and any website can already create a digital library. More and more libraries, bookstores and publishing houses have no walls, no windows and no shelves. Their premises are their websites, and all the transactions are made on the Web. As for distribution, it is still possible to buy newspapers and magazines at the newsstand or to receive them in the letterbox, but more and more people read them on the Web, and more and more periodicals are "only" electronic. ”

“ It is an Internet retailer of books, music, and other information-based products that offers services traditional retailers cannot: lower prices, selection, and a wealth of product information.
Today Amazon.com offers 3 million books, CDs, audiobooks, DVDs, computer games - more than 14 times as many titles as the large chain superstores - to more to 3 million people in more than 160 countries. "Businesses can do things on the Web that simply cannot be done any other way", says Jeff Bezos. "We are changing the way people buy books and music." ”

“ I have a dream that perhaps in our lifetime in Africa, we will see villagers being able to access [the] Internet from their rural villages where today there is no water and no electricity. We hope they will be able to watch Sky News on their portable televisions, but maybe this is just a dream."
For the media particularly, there is an abyss between the 'info-rich' and the 'info-poor'. In many African countries, the circulation of newspapers is very low compared to the population figures, and each copy is read by at least twenty people. ”

“ With the explosion of the Internet, some information specialists and others decided to move over to companies specialized in computing and the Internet.
Even if information specialists or journalists, for example, convince us they will always be useful, on a general scale the employment trends for the future are far from exciting. Will all the people working in the print media be able to get training and retraining in new technologies, or will they be violently hit by unemployment? ”

“ Besides this gigantic and lively encyclopedia, the people working in these different fields can increase exchanges thanks to electronic mail and discussion forums. For once, a (relatively) cheap new tool permits people to communicate quickly and worldwide with no concern for time and boundaries.
The disruption of the print media by the Internet has led to new perspectives for intellectual property and regulations about cyberspace. The so-called "multimedia convergence" has led to major changes in jobs. We are living the first years of the information society. ”

“ Nevertheless, multimedia convergence in particular and the globalization of the economy in general has put the developing countries in a position of inferiority because the printing and radio-television broadcasting means are in the hands of a few main western groups. Cultural problems exist alongside economic problems. Paradoxically, information relating to Africa and broadcast for Africans doesn't come from the African continent, but is broadcast by westerners who transmit their own vision of Africa, without any real perception of its economic and social situation. ”

“ There is a close correlation between economic and social development and access to telecommunications. Access to new communication technologies expands much more rapidly in the North than in the South, and there are many more web servers in North America and in Europe than on the other continents. Two-thirds of the Internet users live in the United States, where 40% of households are equipped with a computer, a percentage that we also find in Denmark, Switzerland and Netherlands. The percentage is 30% in Germany, 25% in United Kingdom, and 20% for most industrialized countries. ”

“ As the representative of the people and the guardian of democratic values, the state has the right and responsibility to help integrate cyberspace and conventional society.
Technology standards and privacy issues, for example, are too important to be entrusted to the marketplace alone. Competing software firms have little interest in preserving the open standards that are essential to a fully functioning interactive network. Markets encourage innovation, but they do not necessarily insure the public interest. ”

“ It seems that the Internet is moving people in two quite different directions at the same time. The Internet (initially based on English) is connecting people all around the world. This is further promoting a common language for people to use for communication. But it is also creating contact between people of different languages and creates a greater interest in multilingualism. A common language is great but in no way replaces this need.
So the Internet promotes both a common language AND multilingualism. The good news is that it helps provide solutions. ”

“ In fact, these Project Gutenberg Etext files are so plain that you can do a search on them without even using an intermediate search program (i.e. a program between you and the disk) . Norton's and other direct disk access programs can search every one of your files without you even naming them, pointing to an Etext directory, or whatever. You can simply search a raw output from the disk. . .I do this on a half gigabyte disk partition, containing all our editions."
In this same spirit, Project Gutenberg selects Etexts that large portions of the audience will want and use frequently. ”

“ The reference staff at the OECD Library uses the Internet for a good deal of their work. Often an academic working paper will be on the Web and will be available for full-text downloading. We are currently investigating supplementing our subscriptions to certain of our periodicals with access to the electronic versions on the Internet.
The Internet is impinging on many peoples' lives and Information Managers are the best people to help researchers around the labyrinth. The Internet is just in its infancy and we are all going to be witnesses to its growth and refinement. ”

“ For someone who does not like queuing in his favorite library on a Saturday afternoon, the Web can bring a lot of relief. He can "leaf" through short descriptions and extracts of books, order on-line the books he is interested in and pay with his credit card. The only delay encountered is the time necessary for the book to be shipped to his house. Such a person is looking forward to being equipped with a digital book, which will appear in 1999.
Jeff Bezos created Amazon.com in July 1995, after a market study which led him to conclude that books were the best products to sell on the Internet. ”

“ The development of the Digital Library will enable the British Library to embrace the digital information age. Digital technology will be used to preserve and extend the Library's unparalleled collection. Access to the collection will become boundless with users from all over the world, at any time, having simple, fast access to digitized materials using computer networks, particularly the Internet. ”

“ When television was developed, people had feared that it would do away cinemas, but it had not. One should not be afraid of the future. Fear of the future should not lead us to stifle creativity with regulations. Creativity was needed to generate new employment. The spirit of enterprise had to be reinforced with the new technology in order to create jobs for those who had been displaced. ”

“ The readers can read on their screen excerpts or full texts of books. Many on-line bookstores offer an extensive literary magazine with an editorial content which changes every day.
The dream of catalog managers to be able to give access to a document through its bibliographic record is no longer totally utopian. It is already the case for a few thousand works belonging to public domain. Organizations are also studying the possibility of posting commercial documents on the Web, in return for a royalty tax corresponding to the copyright rights, which could be paid by credit card. ”

“ Libraries have a new tool for letting the public know their collections better, and for developing projects for real or potential users. The Internet is also a gigantic encyclopedia, easily available for consultation by the libraries' staff and readers. ”

“ Even if electronic publishing considerably expands over the next few years, people will still find it convenient to have the paper version of a book or a magazine, perhaps until the digital books become really cheap. Nevertheless, the functions of traditional publishing will certainly have to be thoroughly redefined in relation to the development of electronic publishing and its considerable prospects, beginning with the low costs and the quick access to documents. ”

“ If the technological developments really created new jobs, as had been suggested, then it might have been better to invest the money in reliable studies about what jobs were being created and which ones were being lost, rather than in social plans which often created artificial jobs. These studies should highlight the new skills and qualifications in demand as the technological convergence process broke down the barriers between the printing industry, journalism and other vehicles of information. ”

“ Technology offers the opportunity to rationalize work, to reduce working time and to encourage intellectual pursuits and even entertainment. But so far none of this has happened. On the contrary, media professionals - whether executives, journalists or others - are working longer and longer hours. If one were to rigorously observe the labour legislation and the rights of professionals, then the extraordinary positive aspects of these new technologies would emerge. This has not been the case in Brazil. Journalists can be easily phoned on weekends to do extra work without extra pay. ”

“ In the
long term, a digital library will only be one element of the whole library".
Digital libraries give instant access to many works in the public domain. They also give instant access to old and rare texts and images. The full-screen images are still quite long to download, so many sites were backed up to present small images, so as not to ask too much from the cybernaut's patience. Most of the time a bigger format can be requested by clicking on the selected image. This problem should be solved in the future with improvements in data transmission. ”

“ The collections of existing digital libraries increase regularly, and new digital libraries come up constantly.
Some digital libraries are created by "traditional" libraries who want to put their documents at the disposal of Internet users. Other digital libraries are "only" digital - their life is 100% on the Web.
Hosted by the Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the Universal Library defines the digital library as "a digital library of digital documents, artifacts, and records. ”

“ A very important factor too is the radical change between the book culture and the digital culture. Moving from one to the other as we are doing now deeply changes our relationship to knowledge, because we move from stable information to moving information. During the September 1996 meeting of the International Federation of Information Processing, Dale Spender explained this phenomenon in a very interesting lecture about Creativity and the Computer Education Industry:
"Throughout print culture, information has been contained in books - and this has helped to shape our notion of information. ”