The World Wide Web Virtual Library (WWW VL) was the first index of content on the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW or simply the Web) is an information system that enables Content (media), content sharing over the Internet through user-friendly ways meant to appeal to users beyond Information technology, IT specialists and hobbyis ...

and still operates as a directory of

e-text e-text (from "''electronics, electronic text''"; sometimes written as etext) is a general term for any Electronic document, document that is read in digital data, digital form, and especially a document that is mainly text. For example, a compute ...

s and information sources on the web.

Overview

The Virtual Library was started by

Tim Berners-Lee Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (born 8 June 1955), also known as TimBL, is an English computer scientist best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web, the HTML markup language, the URL system, and HTTP. He is a professorial research fellow a ...

creator of

HTML Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets ( ...

and the

itself, in 1991 at

CERN The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in Meyrin, western suburb of Gene ...

Geneva Geneva ( , ; ) ; ; . is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland and the most populous in French-speaking Romandy. Situated in the southwest of the country, where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the ca ...

. Unlike commercial index sites, it is run by a loose confederation of volunteers, who compile pages of key links for particular areas in which they are experts. It is sometimes informally referred to as the "WWWVL", the "Virtual Library" or just "the VL". The individual indexes, or ''virtual libraries'' live on hundreds of different servers around the world. A set of index pages linking these individual libraries is maintained at ''vlib.org'', in

only a few kilometres from where the VL began life. A mirror of this index is kept at

East Anglia East Anglia is an area of the East of England, often defined as including the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, with parts of Essex sometimes also included. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Angles, ...

in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

History

The Virtual Library was first conceived and run by

in 1991, and later expanded, organised and managed for several years by Arthur Secret as the "virtual librarian", before it became a formally established association with Gerard Manning as its Council's first chairman. The late Bertrand Ibrahim was a key contributor to the pre-association phase of the Virtual Library's development and then served as its Secretary until his untimely death in 2001 at the age of 46. A brief history, with links to archived pages and screenshots, is maintained on the Vlib website. The Virtual Library grew over the years. For example, there is the ''WWW-VL History Central Catalogue'', which was launched on 21 September 1993 by Lynn H. Nelson at Kansas University. From April 2004, it was relocated at the

European University Institute The European University Institute (EUI) is an international postgraduate and post-doctoral research-intensive university and an intergovernmental organisation with juridical personality, established by its founding member states to contribu ...

Florence Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025. Florence ...

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

, where a history of the catalogue is also available. The

Virtual Library museums pages The Virtual Library museums pages (VLmp) formed an early leading directory of online museums around the world. History The VLmp online directory resource was founded by Jonathan Bowen in 1994, originally at the Oxford University Computing La ...

(VLmp) were added by Jonathan Bowen to the Virtual Library to cover

museum A museum is an institution dedicated to displaying or Preservation (library and archive), preserving culturally or scientifically significant objects. Many museums have exhibitions of these objects on public display, and some have private colle ...

s in 1994. In 2005, the central WWW Virtual Library website (vlib.org) was taken over by a new member, Michael Chapman, leading to the demise of the project. Access by any other party was denied after a change in password. The elected council, consisting of established maintainers of individual virtual libraries, was ignored, and a new council of non-maintainers with little or no association with the Virtual Library was unilaterally instated. The Virtual Library as a cohesive collective of knowledge websites maintained by experts rapidly waned. While the Virtual Library as a cooperative of indexed sites, the first on the Web, has ceased to be, many individual virtual library sites continue to be important and valuable academic resources.

References

External links

* {{Authority control 1991 establishments in Switzerland Internet properties established in 1991 Web directories Aggregation-based digital libraries Swiss digital libraries CERN Tim Berners-Lee

Overview

History

See also

References

External links