The Gemstar eBook was launched in November 2000 after Gemstar bought in January 2000 Nuvomedia (author of the Rocket eBook) and SoftBook Press (author of the SoftBook Reader), the two companies that created the first ebook readers. Two versions of the Gemstar eBook were available for sale in the U.S., the REB 1100 (successor of the Rocket eBook) with a black and white screen, and the REB 1200 (successor of the SoftBook Reader) with a color screen, both produced under the RCA label, belonging to Thomson Multimedia. Gemstar tried to launch them in Europe too, beginning with Germany, while buying 00h00, a French publisher of ebooks, in September 2000. In fall 2002, cheaper ebook readers were launched as GEB 1150 and 2150, produced by Gemstar instead of RCA. Sales were still far below expectations. The company stopped selling ebook readers in June 2003, and stopped selling ebooks the following month. # The Cybook The first European ebook reader didn’t work well either. Developed by Cytale, a French company created by Olivier Pujol, the Cybook (21 x 16 cm, 1 kilo) was launched in January 2001. Its memory -- 32 M of SDRAM and 16 M of flash memory -- could store 15.000 pages, or 30 books of 500 pages. Sales were far below expectations, and Cytale closed its doors in July 2002. This model was later renamed Cybook 1st generation, waiting for more generations to come. The Cybook project was taken over by Bookeen, a company created in 2003 by Michael Dahan and Laurent Picard, two former engineers from Cytale. The Cybook 2nd generation was available in June 2004. The Cybook Gen3 (3rd generation) was available in July 2007, with a screen using the E Ink technology. 1999 > LIBRARIANS IN CYBERSPACE [Summary] To help their patrons deal with the internet, to select and organize information for them, to create and maintain websites, to check specialized online databases, and to update online catalogs became daily tasks for librarians. As stated in August 1999 by Bruno Didier, webmaster of the Pasteur Institute Library in Paris, France: "Our relationship with both the information and the users has changed. We are increasingly becoming mediators, and perhaps to a lesser extent 'curators'. My present activity is typical of this new situation: I am working to provide quick access to information and to create effective means of communication, but I also train people to use these new tools. (...) I think the future of our job is tied to cooperation and use of common resources. It is certainly an old project, but it is really the first time we have had the means to set it up." *** To help their patrons deal with the internet, to select and organize information for them, to create and maintain websites, to check specialized databases and to update online catalogs became daily tasks for librarians.