In late 2000, thousands of public domain works were freely available on the web in digital libraries.
A number of bookstores and publishers had their own websites. Some of them were born online, with all their transactions made through the internet.
Alongside their traditional tasks of lending books or other documents, and offering a collection of reference works, librarians helped their patrons to navigate the web without being drowned, organized a selection of websites for them, and created their own websites with an online catalog and a digital library.
More and more books and periodicals were "only" digital, skipping the cost of a print version. From "static" in print books, information become "fluid" on the internet, and regularly updated.
Many authors were using the internet to seek information, disseminate their work, exchange with their readers and collaborate with other creators.
Some authors began searching how using hyperlinks could expand their writing towards new directions, creating hypermedia novels and sites of hyperfiction, while mixing text, image and sound.
Academic and scientific publishers began to reorganize their work and favor online publishing, with prints versions only on demand. Some universities made their own textbooks with a selection of chapters and articles from a database, as well as comments from professors.
The internet became mandatory to find information, communicate, access documents, and broaden our knowledge. People no longer needed to run after information. Information was there, by the numbers, available on our screen, often at no cost, including for those who studied in a remote place, lived in the countryside, worked at home or were stuck in a bed.
The web became a gigantic encyclopedia, a extensive library, a huge bookstore and a full medium on its own.
Some people even read a book on the screen of a computer, a PDA or a (still very expensive) ebook reader.
[Summary] Henk Slettenhaar has extensive knowledge of communication technology, with a long career in Geneva, Switzerland, and California. In 1992, he founded the Swiss Silicon Valley Association (SVA) and, since then, has been taking study groups to Silicon Valley, San Francisco and other high-tech areas. Henk wrote in July 2001: "I am experiencing a tremendous change with having a 'broadband' connection at home. To be connected at all times is so completelely different from dial-up. I now receive email as soon as it arrives, I can listen to my favorite radio stations wherever they are. I can listen to the news when I want to. Get the music I like all the time. (...) The only thing which is missing is good quality real time video. The bandwidth is too low for that." Ten years later, Henk has watched real time video, and read ebooks in the Kindle and the iPad.