European Organization for Nuclear Research), Geneva, Switzerland. In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee networked documents using hypertext. In 1990, he developed the first HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) server and the first web browser. In 1991, the web was operational and radically changed the way people were using the internet. Hypertext links allowed us to move from one textual or visual document to another with a simple click of the mouse. Information became interactive. Later on, this interactivity was further enhanced with hypermedia links that could link texts and images with graphics, video or music. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was founded in October 1994 to develop protocols for the web.

January 1991 > Unicode, an encoding system for all languages

First published in January 1991, Unicode "provides a unique number for every character, no matter what the platform, no matter what the program, no matter what the language" (excerpt from the website). This double-byte platform-independent encoding provides a basis for the processing, storage and interchange of text data in any language. Unicode is maintained by the Unicode Consortium, with its variants UTF- 8 (UTF: Unicode Transformation Format), UTF-16 and UTF-32, and is a component of the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) specifications. In 2008, 50% of all the documents available on the internet were encoded in Unicode, with the other 50% still encoded in ASCII, a 7-byte encoding system dating back from 1968 for English and Latin, with 8- byte "extensions" added then for a few European languages.

January 1993 > The Online Books Page, a catalog of free ebooks

Founded in 1993 by John Mark Ockerbloom when he was a student at Carnegie Mellon University (in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States), the Online Books Page is "a website that facilitates access to books that are freely readable over the internet. It also aims to encourage the development of such online books, for the benefit and edification of all." John Mark Ockerbloom first maintained this page on the website of the School of Computer Science of Carnegie Mellon University. In 1999, he moved it to its present location at the University of Pennsylvania Library, where he is a digital library planner and researcher. The Online Books Page offered links to 12,000 books in 1999, 20,000 books in 2003 (including 4,000 books published by women), 25,000 books in 2006, 30,000 books in 2008, and 35,000 books in 2010. The books "have been authored, placed online, and hosted by a wide variety of individuals and groups throughout the world", with a number of books from Project Gutenberg. The FAQ gives copyright information for most countries in the world, with links to further reading.

June 1993 > PDF and Acrobat Reader, launched by Adobe

Adobe launched PDF (Portable Document Format) in June 1993, with Acrobat Reader (free, to read PDF documents) and Adobe Acrobat (for a fee, to create PDF documents). As the "veteran" format, PDF was perfected over the years as a 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 gave the tools to create and view PDF files, for a number of languages and platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux). Acrobat Reader was available for PDAs, beginning with the Palm Pilot (May 2001) and the Pocket PC (December 2001). Between 1993 and 2003, over 500 million copies of Acrobat Reader were downloaded worldwide. In 2003, Acrobat Reader was available in many languages and for many platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, Palm OS, Pocket PC, Symbian OS, etc.), and approximately 10% of the documents on the internet were available in PDF.

July 1993 > The E-zine-list, a list of electronic zines

As explained in 1993 by John Labovitz, founder of the E-zine-list: "'Zine' is short for either 'fanzine' or 'magazine', depending on your point of view. Zines are generally produced by one person or a small group of people, done often for fun or personal reasons, and tend to be irreverent, bizarre, and/or esoteric. (…) An 'e-zine' is a zine that is distributed partially or solely on electronic networks like the internet." 3,045 e-zines were listed in November 1998, with e-zines spreading like fire. "Even the term 'e-zine' has been co-opted by the commercial world, and has come to mean nearly any type of publication distributed electronically. Yet there is still the original, independent fringe, who continue to publish from their heart, or push the boundaries of what we call a 'zine'."

November 1993 > Mosaic was the first public browser

Developed by NSCA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) at the University of Illinois (United States) and distributed free of charge since November 1993, Mosaic was the first browser for the general public, and contributed greatly to the development of the web. In early 1994, part of the Mosaic team migrated to the Netscape Communications Corporation to develop a new browser called Netscape Navigator. In 1995, Microsoft launched its own browser Internet Explorer. Other browsers were launched then, like Opera and Safari, Apple's browser.

February 1994 > The first library website

The first library website was the website of the Helsinki City Library in Finland, which went live in February 1994. From then on, 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 finally fulfill two goals that used to be in contradiction: preservation on shelves, and communication on the internet. Library treasures went online, like Beowulf, the earliest known narrative poem in English, dated circa 1000, or the original Bible from Gutenberg, dated 1455, on the website of the British Library.

May 1994 > The Human-Languages Page, an online catalog of linguistic resources

Created by Tyler Chambers in May 1994, the Human-Languages Page (H-LP) was a comprehensive catalog of 1,800 language-related internet resources in 100 languages in September 1998, with six subject listings (languages and literature, schools and institutions, linguistics resources, products and services, organizations, jobs and internships) and two category listings (dictionaries, language lessons). In spring 2001, the Human-Languages Page merged with the Languages Catalog, a section of the WWW Virtual Library, to become iLoveLanguages, with an index of 2,000 linguistic resources in 100 languages in September 2003, and 2,400 linguistic resources in September 2007.

1994 > Athena, a Swiss multilingual digital library

Athena was founded in 1994 by Pierre Perroud, a Swiss teacher, and hosted on the website of the University of Geneva, Switzerland. Athena was a multilingual digital library specializing in philosophy, science, literature, history, and economics, either by digitizing documents or by providing links to existing etexts. The Helvetia section provided documents about Switzerland. Geneva being the main city in French- speaking Switzerland, Athena also provided a section for French- language texts. A specific page offered an extensive selection of other digital libraries worldwide, with relevant links.

1994 > NAP: free digital versions as a marketing tool to sell print books