1879: John Benjamin Dancer produces the first micro-photographs, an early microform preservation format
1936: The American Library Association endorses the use of microforms for document preservation
1938: Eugene B. Power founds University Microfilms, a company that we know today as ProQuest
1963: The ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) computer standard is developed, allowing machines to exchange data.
1965: Digital Equipment Corporation produces the PDP-8, the first successful minicomputer
1969: ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet, is created as part of a project at the U.S. Department of Defense
1973: LexisNexis develops the world's first commercial, full-text search and retrieval engine used for legal research
1977: Apple introduces their first personal computer
1981: IBM launches the PC
1983: The TCP/IP protocol is adopted as a standard by the
1984: Work begins on building the Turfgrass Information File database
1986: The National Science Foundation builds the NSFNet backbone
1988: EndNote first released
1988: ABI/INFORM, the popular business database, is first released on CD-ROM.
1989: MSU Online catalog goes public
1992: MeL founded
1995: JSTOR launched
1996: ProQuest database first appears online
1997: AOL Instant Messenger launched
1998: Google, Inc. is launched
1998: LexisNexis Academic launches
1999: Ebrary, a major supplier of ebooks to libraries, is founded
