A third participant, Walter Durling, director of AT&T Global Information Solutions in the United States, had quite theoretical words about the matter: "Technology would not change the core of human relations. More sophisticated means of communicating, new mechanisms for negotiating, and new types of conflicts would all arise, but the relationships between workers and employers themselves would continue to be the same. When film was invented, people had been afraid that it could bring theatre to an end. That has not happened. When television was developed, people had feared that it would do away cinemas, but it had not. One should not be afraid of the future. Fear of the future should not lead us to stifle creativity with regulations. Creativity was needed to generate new employment. The spirit of enterprise had to be reinforced with the new technology in order to create jobs for those who had been displaced. Problems should not be anticipated, but tackled when they arose." In short, humanity shouldn't fear technology.
# Job creation vs. lay-off
In fact, employees were not so much afraid of technology as they were afraid of losing their jobs. In 1996, unemployment was already significant in any field, which was not the case when film and television were invented.
What would be the balance between job creation and lay-off in the near future? Unions were struggling worldwide to promote the creation of jobs through investment, innovation, vocational training, computer literacy, retraining for new jobs in digital technology, fair conditions for labor contracts and collective agreements, defense of copyright for the re-use of articles from the print media to the web, protection of workers in the artistic field, and defense of teleworkers as workers having full rights.
Despite unions' efforts, would the situation become as tragic as suggested in a note of the symposium's proceedings? "Some fear a future in which individuals will be forced to struggle for survival in an electronic jungle. And the survival mechanisms which have been developed in recent decades, such as relatively stable employment relations, collective agreements, employee representation, employer- provided job training, and jointly funded social security schemes, may be sorely tested in a world where work crosses borders at the speed of light."
1997 > A PORTAL FOR EUROPEAN NATIONAL LIBRARIES
[Summary] Gabriel — an acronym for "Gateway and Bridge to Europe's National Libraries" — was launched as a common portal giving access to the internet services of participating libraries. The Gabriel project was conceived during the 1994 CENL (Conference of European National Librarians) meeting in Oslo, Norway, as an common electronic board with updates about ongoing internet projects. Another meeting took place in March 1995 with representatives from the national libraries in the Netherlands, United Kingdom and Finland, who launched a pilot project and were joined then by the national libraries in Germany, France and Poland. A first Gabriel website was launched in September 1995. During the 1996 CENL meeting in Lisbon, Portugal, Gabriel became an official CENL website, with a new trilingual (English, French, German) portal launched in January 1997.
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Gabriel — an acronym for "Gateway and Bridge to Europe's National Libraries — was launched in January 1997 as a common portal giving access to the internet services of the participating libraries.
As stated on its website: "Gabriel also recalls Gabriel Naudé, whose 'Advis pour dresser une bibliothèque' (Paris, 1627) is one of the earliest theoretical works about libraries in any European language and provides a blueprint for the great modern research library. The name Gabriel is common to many European languages and is derived from the Old Testament, where Gabriel appears as one of the archangels or heavenly messengers. He also appears in a similar role in the New Testament and the Qu'ran."