Young generations most likely are not aware of the existence of a
Dutch information industry before the introduction of internet in 1994. The
run-up to the commercial and public start of the digital Dutch information
industry started in 1967 and 13 years later in 1980 the Dutch information
industry went life with databases, videotext services and teletext information
services, produced by existing and new companies.
The run-up to 1980
The digitisation of publishing information started with the
automation of the typesetting process and storage on magnetic tapes. The
process was figured out by Excerpta Medica and its sister company Infonet.
Scientific publisher Excerpta Medica started phototypesetting and offline and
online distribution, resp. on magnetic tapes and by host organisations such as
Dialog since 1974. The expertise of Infonet was used by the reference team
producing the Grote Spectrum Encyclopedie (GSE) and the national library
system. In 1975 the management of Kluwer visited legal publishers such as Westlaw in the USA and started to discuss setting up a Dutch legal database. By 1977 Kluwer Legal was in the process of building up databases and having demos of the first legal databases.
In 1976 videotex was researched for introduction in The Netherlands. The Dutch state owned telco PTT expressed interest in videotex. A year later the Dutch public broadcasting company NOS started to study the variant of videotext, the text television service teletext.
The 1978 the consumer electronics fair Firato was the
decision point to get serious about electronic services or stay behind. So in
1979 NOS decided to start experimenting with the official text television
service Teletekst. PTT took the decision to start introducing a videotext
service; also the Dutch publisher VNU set up a videotext consultancy service
TVS (Toegepaste Viewdata Systemen). So two state companies and three private
companies were preparing to go resp. public or commericial.
Race for digital information
The year 1980 started with firecrackers. VNU launched a
media laboratory named VNU Database Publishing International. It was founded to
research the digital opportunities in the business sector.On April 1, 1980 two introductions happened. The public broadcast system started the television text service Teletekst, excluding the newspaper sector from this service. On the same day Kluwer Legal launched its Legal Database service commercially.
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Digitisation as part of the internationalisation
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Looking back after 35 years, we can conclude that Elsevier and Kluwer are great in the digital information industry and have established an international footprint. Elsevier is big with information services like LexisNexis, Science Direct and Scopus. Kluwer has specialised in law and health care and offers digital services. VNU is no longer since 2007, when its name was changed in Nielsen Corp.