German library networks in the web age

The Internet arrived on the German library scene in the fall of 1994. Until then, libraries had connected to hosts or offered their catalogs, if at all, over networks based on the X.25 protocol. Because of Telekom's monopoly, these services were several times more expensive than comparable services in the United States—prohibitively so for small libraries and private citizens, who rarely ventured beyond CompuServe or videotext. The Internet arose alongside these networks in the late 1980s, first at university computer science departments and in the form of pioneering companies such as EUNet. But it did not attract much attention until 1993, when Mosaic became available, allowing text and graphics to be displayed side‐by‐side and providing an easy way to surf the Web with mouse clicks. Weekly magazines began to carry dramatic stories about the coming Datenautobahn.