Ironically, books on paper are status symbols in the digital age. According to The Wall Street Journal, books are 'today's must-have home accessory' and 'an entire industry of by-the-yard booksellers and decorators--along with false-spine makers-is rising up, creating at least the illusion of cultivated minds.' The Journal also noted that 'true literature lovers, of course, are appalled.' That was the first paragraph in my last article about books on the Web ("All About Books--Online," DATA-BASE, February/March 1997), which also reported some good news for literature lovers: many online booksellers were creating sites that offered unprecedented access to books as well as huge databases of free information about them. The article noted that a little site called Amazon.com was starting to get a lot of attention. Today, of course, Amazon is one of the most widely recognized brand names in cyberspace. And many other things have changed since that first article was written. Organizations are putting bookstores on their intranets; electronic books have gained wider acceptance; and Barnes & Noble has developed a Web site. It hasn't made much of a dent in Amazon's market share (barnesandnoble.com sells only 15% of books bought online; Amazon.com sells 75%), but Barnes & Noble promises to be a fierce online competitor. The company is positioning itself to seize the book niche--both paper and electronic--as Amazon expands into auctions and other ventures. Of course, some things haven't changed in the past few years. You can still find irony in the online book world. It's ironic that books represent both a popular product in the new ebusiness economy and an information medium that dates back atleast to the ancient Greeks who handbound leaflets of folded papyrus. Another thing that hasn't changed is that the Web offers vast collections of free bibliographic data.
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