insight and analysis to help senior executives build
E-commerce
resources on the web
by Paul Pedley, Economist Intelligence
Unit
No matter where you look there seem to be
news stories, journal articles, and television
and radio programmes about e-commerce.
Indeed, this has now moved on from
e-commerce to e-business and more recently
to m-commerce.
There are a lot of websites covering
e-business / e-commerce and I have tried to
trawl through these sites and pick out some of
the best that are available.
Portals
About.com - electronic commerce
(http://ecommerce.about.com/
smallbusiness/ecommerce/)
About.com's sites are each devoted to a single
topic and an expert guide oversees them. This
means that the About.com guide to electronic
commerce has content that is highly targeted,
containing feature articles, news and discussions
on e-commerce.
CIO Electronic Commerce Research Center
(http://www.cio.com/forums/ec)
The publishers of CIO magazine produce this site.
It covers a wide range of topics relating to e-
commerce including b2b, retail, electronic data
interchange, e-banking, government regulations,
legal and security issues and case studies. The site
also has a number of other resources such as
discussion forums, and links to the full-text of
articles from CIO magazine.
ebusinessforum.com
(http://www.ebusinessforum.com)
ebusinessforum.com is a new website from the
Economist Intelligence Unit, which provides
successful strategies for the global digital
economy. The strength of the site is its global
coverage. It has produced a set of e-business-
readiness rankings that act as a guide to the
relative preparedness of the world's main markets
for the e-business era. Within the "Research" area
of the site, there are several hundred links to useful
websites for e-business information covering
statistics, market research, consultancies, portals,
news, trade journals, IT companies, legal issues,
and country / region specific material.
Martin White's e-commerce links
(http://www.intranetfocus.com/E-business/
E-commerce_links/e-commerce_Iinks.html)
There is a set of e-commerce links on Martin
White's website covering reports & surveys,
organisations, current awareness, portal sites,
magazines, and IT companies. Many of the sources
give a good strategic overview of
e-commerce, whilst other listed sites are useful for
current news and activities.
Wilson Internet Services
(http://www.wilsoninternet.com)
This portal of e-commerce resources by the pub-
lishers of "Web Commerce Today" consists of
links to news headlines, free e-commerce articles,
an e-commerce forum plus a number of subscrip-
tions based resources.
Statistics
Cyberatlas
(http://cyberatlas.internet.com)
This site, owned by internet.com, is the web
marketer's guide to online facts to help people
understand their business environment and make
more informed decisions. The statistics are split up
into headings such as the big picture,
demographics, geography and traffic patterns.
eStats (eMarketer)
(http://www.emarketer.com/estats/
welcome.html)
The eMarketer site provides statistics, news and
information. The statistics area of the site is
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E-commerce resources on the web
presented in the form of news stories, which then
link through to press releases, or brief summaries
of surveys and research reports; and the articles
sometimes contain useful charts.
Headcount.com
(http://www.headcount.com)
Headcount.com is provided by INT'L.com. It
summarises market research reports, and lets you
see information about the size of Internet markets
worldwide. The information is arranged either by
country, region or language.
Internet Economy Indicators
(http://www.internetindicators.com)
This site contains useful facts and figures about the
Internet. The coverage includes data on e-com-
merce.
OECD
(http://www.oecd.org)
The OECD website has a set of Internet and
electronic commerce indicators (http://
www.oecd.org//dsti/sti/it/cm/stats/
newindicators.htm) on its site, as well as a report
on measuring electronic commerce. (http://
www.oecd.org//dsti/sti/it/ec/prod/e_97-185.htm)
Web Metrics
(http://www2.cio.com/webbusiness/metrics)
This is part of the WebBusiness site, which aims to
provide insight and strategy for competing online.
WebBusiness is in turn part of CIO.com. The Web
Metrics pages provide facts and figures reflecting
the state of the online world.
UK government policy &
initiatives
Department of Trade & Industry -
Information Age
(http://www.dti.gov.uk/infoage/index.htm)
This site contains a set of links that provide a
useful overview of government strategy and
initiatives for the information age and e-commerce.
The links include case studies, the 1999
58—VINE 120
e-commerce@its.best.uk report, and issues con-
cerning e-commerce and the consumer.
Information Society Initiative
(http://www.isi.gov.uk/isi/
govpolicyframe.htm)
The Information Society Initiative outlines clearly
the government's policy for the information age
including the government's e-commerce strategy,
and the roles of the e-minister and the e-envoy.
The site is geared towards providing advice for
small firms.
Ukstate.com
(http://www.ukstate.com)
This new website by The Stationery Office has a
"Your government" section which includes an e-
government newsletter to keep people up to date
with the latest government initiatives to get the UK
online; plus an e-government directory with links
to the office of the e-envoy, an e-forum for debate
and discussion, and information age champions
within the civil service.
Magazines
Business 2.0
(http://www.business2.com)
This site contains articles, industry news, and some
statistical data. There is also a section detailing 10
principles of the new economy.
The Industry Standard
(http://www.thestandard.com)
Contains news, analysis, special features and case
studies. The site has an ib2b directory with de-
tailed company and product information for
Internet professionals; plus The Standard 100
listing the most important companies in the
Internet economy.
Redherring.com
(http://www.redherring.com)
Covers technology business news, analysis, com-
mentary, and research; including trends, people,
and companies.

FT.com Connectis
(http://www.ft.com/connectis)
Europe's e-business magazine online. The ft.com
site also has other useful resources relevant to
ebusiness such as the section covering the IT
industry which has news and analysis.
News
E-commerce Times
(http://www.ecommercetimes.com)
The E-commerce Times is an excellent source of
daily news on e-commerce. The site also contains
feature articles for entrepreneurs and companies
doing business on the Internet; a guide to products
and services; plus a calendar of events.
Moreover.com
(http://w.moreover.com/e-commerce)
Moreover.com is a news aggregator that produces
web-feeds on over 270 b2b topics. The e-com-
merce news is one of the series of Internet
headings.
Yahoo electronic commerce news stories
(http://fulIcoverage.yahoo.com/
FuII_Coverage/Tech/EIectronic_Commerce)
The site draws aggregates news from a wide range
of information sources. There are also links to
other useful e-commerce sites, both business-
related and consumer-related.
Electronic commerce and
libraries
Whilst there seems to be plenty of coverage of e-
commerce and e-business in the media, it is
surprising just how little there is about the applica-
tion of e-commerce in libraries. Even when you
attend meetings and seminars on e-commerce
organised by some of the library and information
special interest groups, they more often than not
give a general overview of e-commerce, perhaps
concentrating on some of the strategic issues; and
do not seem to deal with the practical issues and
concerns of library and information workers who
are trying to make it work in practice. There do not
E-commerce resources on the web
seem to be many case studies about how librarians
are using e-commerce within their own organisa-
tions. I thought it would be useful, therefore, to try
and put together a set of links on e-commerce as it
relates to the library world.
BIBLINK
(http://www.hosted.ukoIn.ac.uk/bibIink)
Project BIBLINK aims to establish a relationship
between national bibliographic agencies and
publishers of electronic material, in order to
establish authoritative bibliographical information
which will benefit both sectors.
Book Industry Communication
(http://www.bic.org.uk)
The BIC website has a number of pages on EDI/
electronic commerce. (http://www.bic.org.uk/
edistuff.html)
Copyrightlaws.com
(http://www.copyrightlaws.com)
This is the website of Lesley Ellen Harris and her
company Copyrightlaws.com that is devoted to
international copyright law, digital property, media
and other intellectual property issues. Ms Harris
has written a number of articles on e-commerce
such as "E-commerce for government, libraries,
museums and archives (GLAMSs) and other non-
profits", and a series of "E-LAM reports" covering
online and e-commerce issues specifically for
libraries, archives and museums.
Dawson book division
(http://www.dawson.co.uk)
Dawsons has a set of pages on EDI - electronic
data interchange (http://www.dawson.co.luk/
ukbedi.htm). The company has been using EDI
with its suppliers since 1991 and with its custom-
ers since 1993.
The digital object identifier (DOI) system
(http://www.doi.org)
The DOI is an identification system for intellectual
property in the digital environment, which has
been developed by the International DOI Founda-
tion on behalf of the publishing industry.
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E-commerce resources on the web
EDIFACT in Libraries Forum (ELF)
(http://www-elf.stanford.edu)
ELF exists to facilitate electronic commerce
between libraries and their booksellers and sub-
scription agents, through the implementation of
UN/EDIFACT business transactions for books and
serials. The site has links to related EDI sites plus
a bibliography on electronic data interchange.
EDItEUR
(http://wvvw.editeur.org/main.html)
EDItEUR co-ordinates the development, promo-
tion and implementation of electronic commerce in
the book and serial sectors. They have a useful set
of links to websites on e-commerce in the library
and publishing world.
IMPRIMATUR Services Limited
(http://www.imprimatur.alcs.co.uk)
This started off as a publicly funded research
project on electronic copyright management
systems. It was established to study how to meet
the challenge of multimedia rights clearance in
networks. The original project finished at the end
of 1998 when Imprimatur Services Ltd then carried
on its work.
INDECS
(http://www.indecs.org)
The acronym stands for interoperability of data in
e-commerce systems. The initiative, which ran
from November 1998 - March 2000 was an
international collaborative project, which was
aiming to develop a framework of metadata stand-
ards to support network commerce in intellectual
property.
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International Committee on EDI for Serials
(ICEDIS)
(http://www.icedis.org/main.html)
The committee brings together journal publishers
and subscription agents to develop and define
industry standards for EDI in facilitating journal
subscription processing.
World Intellectual Property Organization
(WIPO)
(http://www.wipo.int)
The WIPO website has a section on electronic
commerce and intellectual property (http://
ecommerce.wipo.int/primer/index.html).
Training courses
Aslib has a regular half-day training course on e-
commerce for information centres which is led by
David Skyrme.(http://www.aslib.com/training/
406.html)
The British Library (http://portico.bl.uk/services/
stb/courses.html) runs a one-day training course
on e-commerce, plus a series of late summer
evening meetings in specific aspects of
e-commerce.
Contact details
Paul Pedley
Head of Research
Economist Intelligence Unit
15 Regent Street
London
SW1Y 4LR
Tel: 020 7830 1014
Email: paulpedley@eiu.com