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 Laboratory in the United Kingdom. It has been supported by the

International Council of Museums The International Council of Museums (ICOM) is a non-governmental organisation dedicated to museums, maintaining formal relations with UNESCO and having a consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council. Founded in 1946, ...

(ICOM) and Museophile Limited. As part of the World Wide Web Virtual Library, initiated 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 ...

and later managed by Arthur Secret. The main VLmp site moved to London South Bank University in the early 2000s and is now hosted on the MuseumsWiki

wiki A wiki ( ) is a form of hypertext publication on the internet which is collaboratively edited and managed by its audience directly through a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages that can either be edited by the public or l ...

, established in 2006 and hosted by Fandom (previously

Wikia Fandom (formerly known as Wikicities and Wikia) is a wiki hosting service that hosts wikis mainly on entertainment topics (i.e., video games, TV series, movies, entertainers, etc.). The Privately held company, privately held for-profit Delaware ...

) as a historical record. The directory was developed and organised in a distributed manner by country, with around twenty people in different countries maintaining various sections. Canada, through the Canadian Heritage Information Network (CHIN), was the first country to become involved. The MDA maintained the United Kingdom section of museums, later the

Collections Trust The Collections Trust is an independent UK-based charity that works with museums, libraries, galleries and archives worldwide to improve the management and use of collections. It was established in February 1977 as the Museum Documentation Associ ...

. The Historisches Centrum Hagen has maintained and hosted pages for

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

. Other countries actively participating included

Romania Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...

. In total, around 20 countries were involved. The directory was influential in the museum field during the 1990s and 2000s. It was used as a standard starting point to find museums online. It was useful for monitoring the growth of museums internationally online. It was also used for online museum surveys. It was recommended as an educational resource and included a search facility.

Virtual Museum of Computing

The Virtual Museum of Computing (VMoC), part of the Virtual Library museums pages, was created as a

virtual museum A virtual museum is a digital entity that draws on the characteristics of a museum, in order to complement, enhance, or augment the museum experience through personalization, interactivity, and richness of content. Virtual museums can perform as ...

providing information on the history of computers and

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

. It included virtual "galleries" (e.g., on

Alan Turing Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher and theoretical biologist. He was highly influential in the development of theoretical computer ...

, curated by Andrew Hodges) and links to other computer museums. VMoC was founded in 1995, initially at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

. As part of VLmp, it was hosted by the

(ICOM). VMoC was also hosted by the

University of Reading The University of Reading is a public research university in Reading, Berkshire, England. It was founded in 1892 as the University Extension College, Reading, an extension college of Christchurch College, Oxford, and became University College, ...

and London South Bank University, with mirror sites internationally within VLmp. Later it was also provided by Museophile Limited. It then became available in archival form as a

). VMoC was reviewed by

Discovery Channel Discovery Channel, known as The Discovery Channel from 1985 to 1995, and often referred to as simply Discovery, is an American cable channel that is best known for its ongoing reality television shows and promotion of pseudoscience. It init ...

Lycos Lycos, Inc. (stylized as LYCOS), is a web search engine and web portal established in 1994, spun out of Carnegie Mellon University. Lycos also encompasses a network of email, web hosting, social networking, and entertainment websites. The company ...

, Anbar Electronic Intelligence, Bookmark Central, Planet Science, RedOrbit, and Science NetLinks during the 1990s. It has also been referenced in books and papers. VMoC has provided computing history event reports.

References

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External links

Virtual Library museums pages
archival site o
MuseumsWiki

Aggregation-based digital libraries 1994 establishments in England International Council of Museums Internet properties established in 1994 London South Bank University Museum informatics Oxford University Computing Laboratory Virtual museums Web directories Web portals

History

Virtual Museum of Computing

See also

References

External links