The Miguel de Cervantes Virtual Library (MCVL; in es, Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, BVMC) is a large-scale

digital library A digital library, also called an online library, an internet library, a digital repository, or a digital collection is an online database of digital objects that can include text, still images, audio, video, digital documents, or other digital me ...

project, hosted and maintained by the

University of Alicante The University of Alicante ( ca-valencia, Universitat d'Alacant, italic=no, ; es, Universidad de Alicante, italic=no, ; also known by the acronym ''UA'') was established in 1979 on the basis of the Center for University Studies (CEU), which was fo ...

Alicante Alicante ( ca-valencia, Alacant) is a city and municipality in the Valencian Community, Spain. It is the capital of the province of Alicante and a historic Mediterranean port. The population of the city was 337,482 , the second-largest in t ...

Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , i ...

. It comprises the largest

open-access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...

repository of digitised

Spanish-language Spanish ( or , Castilian) is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from colloquial Latin spoken on the Iberian peninsula. Today, it is a world language, global language with more than 500 millio ...

historical texts and literature from the

Ibero-American Ibero-America ( es, Iberoamérica, pt, Ibero-América) or Iberian America is a region in the Americas comprising countries or territories where Spanish or Portuguese are predominant languages (usually former territories of Portugal or Spain). P ...

world. When officially launched in 1999, the BVMC was the first

digital archive An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials – in any medium – or the physical facility in which they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or ...

of Spanish-language texts on the

internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

, initially reproducing some 2,000 individual works by 400 of the most significant authors in

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

, Latin American literary and Hispanic Africa. By 2005–2006 the number of registered and available works had reached over 22,000. The library is named for

Miguel de Cervantes Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (; 29 September 1547 (assumed) – 22 April 1616 Old Style and New Style dates, NS) was an Early Modern Spanish writer widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language and one of the world's pre-emin ...

, the famous 16th-century Spanish author and one of the most illustrious names in world literary history. From its inception in 1999, this library has chosen to apply structural markup based on

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable ...

and the TEI encoding scheme for the creation of its documents.Bia, Pedreño (2001)

Notes

References

* * * *

External links

Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes
main website Spanish digital libraries Open-access archives Spanish literature University of Alicante 1999 establishments in Spain Libraries established in 1999 {{Spain-university-stub