heir catalogs and
electronic resources: books, audiobooks, abstracts and full-text
articles, photos, music CDs and videos. In April 2010, WorldCat had 1,5
billion documents.

2006 > Twitter, or information in 140 characters

Founded in 2006 in California by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams and Biz
Stone, Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging tool, for
users to send free short messages of 140 characters maximum, called
tweets, via the internet, IM, or SMS. Sometimes described as the SMS
of the internet, Twitter has since gained worldwide popularity, with
106 million users in April 2010 and 300,000 new users per day. As for
tweets, there were 5,000 per day in 2007, 300,000 in 2008, 2,5 million
in 2009, 50 million in January 2010 and 55 million in April 2010, with
a systematic archiving by the Library of Congress as a reflection of
trends of our time, and their addition by Google in the results of its
search engine.

October 2006 > The Sony Reader

The Sony Reader was launched in October 2006 in the U.S. for US $350,
followed by cheaper and revamped models. The Sony Reader was the first
ebook reader to use the new advanced E Ink screen technology, "a screen
that gives an excellent reading experience very close to that of real
paper, making it very easy going on the eyes" (Mike Cook). Another
major feature of the reader over most other electronic devices is its
battery life, with over 7,000 pages turns - or up to two weeks of power
- on just one battery charge. It is also the first ebook reader to use
Adobe's Digital Editions. The Sony Reader is available in the U.S.,
Canada, UK, Germany and France.

December 2006 > Microsoft Live Search Books

The beta version of Live Search Books was released in December 2006,
with a search possible by keyword for non copyrighted books digitized
by Microsoft in partner libraries. The British Library and the
libraries of the universities of California and Toronto were the first
ones to join in, followed in January 2007 by the New York Public
Library and Cornell University. Books offered full text views and could
be downloaded in PDF files. In May 2007, Microsoft announced agreements
with several publishers, including Cambridge University Press and
McGraw Hill, for their books to be available in Live Search Books.
After digitizing 750,000 books and indexing 80 million journal
articles, Microsoft ended the Live Search Books program in May 2008.
These books are available in t