At the time the site was semi static, updating was done by disk when you had time, making online ordering was also transmitted by diskette with delays on the order of the month!

In 1995, with the help of Xavier Thibert, graphic talent, we have undertaken a complete rewrite of the system. This gave " it ". Today it seems somewhat ridiculous (especially multiple versions tailored to browsers) but it was innovative: a fully dynamic site based on a RDBMS ( postgres ). The update was done via modem and was daily. A revolution at the time! We were also one of the first websites to use animated gifs (handmade at the time) ...

The technologies were used for the Linux operating system, Apache as web server and PostgreSQL as DBMS. These choices have not changed, even if the versions have evolved ...

The pages were very simple and the search was done conventionally by structured fields (eg the search page in 1998 ).

Given the demands of users found it too complex field searching and the difficulties of maintaining multiple versions of pages suited to the browser, a complete overhaul was undertaken in January 1999 (which looked like this ) with:

 A new interface, designed by Xavier Thibert

 And especially a search engine developed entirely by me plaintext

The choice of a complete development of a search engine plaintext was dictated in part by the exorbitant prices of such tools at the time, and, secondly, by the will of the owner of focus on inovation French rather than pay for products "all facts", not necessarily adapted to the specific needs of the library and the uncertain future ...

Since this tool has been the subject of constant improvement to allow for example the phonetic search, management of words with special acaractères (O ’Reilly, C #. Net ...), the management of language work, or, more recently, the transition to the new standard ISBN13 ...

Some programs have remained unchanged since 1995 (more than 10 years) which is to me proof of the robustness and the durability of Unix ...