still the standard information retrieval protocol for the vast majority of users. The origin of the project has caused numerous people to associate it with the University of Michigan, although in fact there has never been an official relationship and the project is supported entirely by volunteer labor and contributions. The equipment is wholly owned by the project maintainers. The project was started in response to the lack of organized archiving of political documents, periodicals and discussions disseminated via Usenet on newsgroups such as alt.activism, misc.activism.progressive, and alt.society.anarchy. The alt.politics.radical-left group came later and was also a substantial source of both materials and regular contributors. Not long thereafter, electronic zines (e-zines) began their rapid proliferation on the internet, and it was clear that these materials suffered from the same lack of coordinated collection and preservation, not to mention the fact that the lines between e-zines (which at the time were mostly related to hacking, phreaking, and internet anarchism) and political materials on the internet were fuzzy enough that most e-zines fit the original mission of The Etext Archives. One thing led to another, and e-zines of all kinds — many on various cultural topics unrelated to politics — invaded the archives in significant volume."

# The E-Zine-List

The E-Zine-List was founded by John Labovitz in summer 1993 as a directory of e-zines around the world, accessible via FTP, gopher, email, the web, and other services. The list was updated monthly.

How did the E-Zine-List begin? On the website, John explained he originally wanted to publicize the print zine Crash by making an electronic version of it. Looking for directories, he only found the discussion group alt.zines and archives like The Well and The Etext Archives. Then came the idea of an organized directory. He began with twelve tiles listed manually in a word processor. Then he wrote his own database.

3,045 zines were listed in November 1998. John wrote on the website: "Now the e-zine world is different. The number of e-zines has increased a hundredfold, crawling out of the FTP and gopher woodworks to declaring themselves worthy of their own domain name, even asking for financial support through advertising. 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'."

After maintaining the list during years, John passed the torch to others.

1993 > THE ONLINE BOOKS PAGE

[Summary] Founded in 1993 by John Mark Ockerbloom when he was a student at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), the Online Books Page is "a website that facilitates access to books that are freely readable over the internet." 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 at the University of Pennsylvania Library, after being hired as 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 (including 7,000 books from Project Gutenberg) and 35,000 books in 2010.

***

In 1993, John Mark Ockerbloom created The Online Books Page as “a website that facilitates access to books that are freely readable over the internet.”

The web was still in its infancy, with Mosaic as its first browser.
John Mark Ockerbloom was a graduate student at the School of Computer
Science (CS) of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU, Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania).

Five years later, in September 1998, John Mark wrote: "I was the original webmaster here at CMU CS, and started our local web in 1993. The local web included pages pointing to various locally developed resources, and originally The Online Books Page was just one of these pages, containing pointers to some books put online by some of the people in our department. (Robert Stockton had made web versions of some of Project Gutenberg's texts.) After a while, people started asking about books at other sites, and I noticed that a number of sites (not just Gutenberg, but also Wiretap and some other places) had books online, and that it would be useful to have some listing of all of them, so that you could go to one place to download or view books from all over the net. So that's how my index got started.

I eventually gave up the webmaster job in 1996, but kept The Online Books Page, since by then I'd gotten very interested in the great potential the net had for making literature available to a wide audience. At this point there are so many books going online that I have a hard time keeping up. But I hope to keep up my online books works in some form or another. I am very excited about the potential of the internet as a mass communication medium in the coming years. I'd also like to stay involved, one way or another, in making books available to a wide audience for free via the net, whether I make this explicitly part of my professional career, or whether I just do it as a spare-time volunteer."

In 1998, there was an index of 7,000 books that could be browsed by author, title or subject. There were also pointers to significant directories and archives of online texts, and to special exhibits.

As stated on the website at the time: "Along with books, The Online Books Page is also now listing major archives of serials (such as magazines, published journals, and newspapers) (…). Serials can be at least as important as books in library research. Serials are often the first places that new research and scholarship appear. They are sources for firsthand accounts of contemporary events and commentary. They are also often the first (and sometimes the only) place that quality literature appears. (For those who might still quibble about serials being listed on a 'books page', back issues of serials are often bound and reissued as hardbound 'books'.)"

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

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 (including 7,000 books from Project Gutenberg) 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". The FAQ listed copyright information about most countries in the world, with links to further reading.

1993 > PDF, FROM PAST TO PRESENT

[Summary] From California, Adobe launched PDF (Portable Document Format) in June 1993, along with Acrobat Reader (free, to read PDFs) and Adobe Acrobat (for a fee, to create PDFs). As stated on the website, PDF "lets you capture and view robust information from any application, on any computer system and share it with anyone around the world.” As the "veteran" format, PDF was perfected over the years as a global standard for distribution and viewing of information. Acrobat Reader was available in several languages, for various platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, Palm OS, Pocket PC, Symbian OS, etc.), and for various devices (computer, PDA, smartphone). In May 2003, Acrobat Reader