World Wide Web Virtual Library

Last updated
The WWW Virtual Library
Tim Berners-Lee.jpg
Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the Virtual Library
Available in English
Founded1991
Headquarters CERN (in 1991), ,
Area servedWorldwide
Created by Tim Berners-Lee
Founder(s) Tim Berners-Lee
EditorsArthur Secret, et al.
Key people Tim Berners-Lee, Arthur Secret, Bertrand Ibrahim
Services Web directory
URL vlib.org
CommercialNo
Launched1991

The World Wide Web Virtual Library (WWW VL) was the first index of content on the World Wide Web and still operates as a directory of e-texts and information sources on the web.

Contents

Overview

The Virtual Library was started by Tim Berners-Lee creator of HTML and the World Wide Web itself, in 1991 at CERN in Geneva. [1] 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, [2] in Geneva only a few kilometres from where the VL began life. A mirror of this index is kept at East Anglia in the United Kingdom. [3]

History

The Virtual Library was first conceived and run by Tim Berners-Lee in 1991, and later expanded, organised and managed for several years by Arthur Secret as the "virtual librarian", [4] before it became a formally established association with Gerard Manning as its Council's first chairman. [5] 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. [5]

The Virtual Library grew over the years. For example, there is the WWW-VL History Central Catalogue, [6] which was launched on 21 September 1993 by Lynn H. Nelson at Kansas University.[ citation needed ] From April 2004, it was relocated at the European University Institute, Florence, Italy, where a history of the catalogue is also available. [7] The Virtual Library museums pages (VLmp) were added by Jonathan Bowen to the Virtual Library to cover museums in 1994. [8]

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. [9] 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.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Semantic Web</span> Extension of the Web to facilitate data exchange

The Semantic Web, sometimes known as Web 3.0, is an extension of the World Wide Web through standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The goal of the Semantic Web is to make Internet data machine-readable.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tim Berners-Lee</span> English computer scientist, inventor of the World Wide Web (born 1955)

Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee, 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 at the University of Oxford and a professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">World Wide Web</span> Linked hypertext system on the Internet

The World Wide Web is an information system that enables content sharing over the Internet through user-friendly ways meant to appeal to users beyond IT specialists and hobbyists. It allows documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet according to specific rules of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Website</span> Set of related web pages served from a single domain

A website is one or more web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, education, commerce, entertainment, or social media. Hyperlinking between web pages guides the navigation of the site, which often starts with a home page. The most-visited sites are Google, YouTube, and Facebook.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">WorldWideWeb</span> First web browser, later renamed Nexus

WorldWideWeb is the first web browser and web page editor. It was discontinued in 1994. It was the first WYSIWYG HTML editor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ViolaWWW</span> Popular web browser in the early 1990s

ViolaWWW is a discontinued web browser, the first to support scripting and stylesheets for the World Wide Web (WWW). It was first released in 1991/1992 for Unix and acted as the recommended browser at CERN, where the WWW was invented, but eventually lost its position as most frequently used browser to Mosaic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Cailliau</span> Belgian engineer, computer scientist, and co-inventor of the World Wide Web

Robert Cailliau is a Belgian informatics engineer who proposed the first (pre-www) hypertext system for CERN in 1987 and collaborated with Tim Berners-Lee on the World Wide Web from before it got its name. He designed the historical logo of the WWW, organized the first International World Wide Web Conference at CERN in 1994 and helped transfer Web development from CERN to the global Web consortium in 1995. He is listed as co-author of How the Web Was Born by James Gillies, the first book-length account of the origins of the World Wide Web.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Line Mode Browser</span> Command-line web browser

The Line Mode Browser is the second web browser ever created. The browser was the first demonstrated to be portable to several different operating systems. Operated from a simple command-line interface, it could be widely used on many computers and computer terminals throughout the Internet. The browser was developed starting in 1990, and then supported by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) as an example and test application for the libwww library.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virtual Library museums pages</span> Online museum directory

The Virtual Library museums pages (VLmp) formed an early leading directory of online museums around the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virtual museum</span> Museum in a digital format

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 the digital footprint of a physical museum, or can act independently, while maintaining the authoritative status as bestowed by the International Council of Museums (ICOM) in its definition of a museum. In tandem with the ICOM mission of a physical museum, the virtual museum is also committed to public access; to both the knowledge systems embedded in the collections and the systematic, and coherent organization of their display, as well as to their long-term preservation. As with a traditional museum, a virtual museum can be designed around specific objects, or can consist of online exhibitions created from primary or secondary resources. Moreover, a virtual museum can refer to the mobile or World Wide Web offerings of traditional museums ; or can be born digital content such as, 3D environments, net art, virtual reality and digital art. Often, discussed in conjunction with other cultural institutions, a museum by definition, is essentially separate from its sister institutions such as a library or an archive. Virtual museums are usually, but not exclusively delivered electronically when they are denoted as online museums, hypermuseum, digital museum, cybermuseums or web museums.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Canadian Heritage Information Network</span> Agency of the federal Department of Canadian Heritage

The Canadian Heritage Information Network is a special operating agency within the federal Department of Canadian Heritage that provides a networked interface to Canada's heritage institutions. It is based in Gatineau, Quebec, and is administratively merged with the Canadian Conservation Institute (CCI), another special operating agency of Canadian Heritage.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Libwww</span>

Libwww is an early World Wide Web software library providing core functions for web browsers, implementing HTML, HTTP, and other technologies. Tim Berners-Lee, at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), released libwww in late 1992, comprising reusable code from the first browsers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mundaneum</span> Institution aimed to gather together all the worlds knowledge founded in 1910

The Mundaneum was an institution which aimed to gather together all the world's knowledge and classify it according to a system called the Universal Decimal Classification. It was developed at the turn of the 20th century by Belgian lawyers Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine. The Mundaneum has been identified as a milestone in the history of data collection and management, and as a precursor to the Internet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of the World Wide Web</span> Information system running in the Internet and its history

The World Wide Web is a global information medium that users can access via computers connected to the Internet. The term is often mistakenly used as a synonym for the Internet, but the Web is a service that operates over the Internet, just as email and Usenet do. The history of the Internet and the history of hypertext date back significantly further than that of the World Wide Web.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alan Kotok</span> American computer scientist

Alan Kotok was an American computer scientist known for his work at Digital Equipment Corporation and at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Steven Levy, in his book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, describes Kotok and his classmates at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as the first true hackers.

A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. It further provides for the capture or input of information which may be returned to the presenting system, then stored or processed as necessary. The method of accessing a particular page or content is achieved by entering its address, known as a Uniform Resource Identifier or URI. This may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content. Hyperlinks present in resources enable users easily to navigate their browsers to related resources. A web browser can also be defined as an application software or program designed to enable users to access, retrieve and view documents and other resources on the Internet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">First International Conference on the World-Wide Web</span>

The First International Conference on the World-Wide Web was the first-ever conference about the World Wide Web, and the first meeting of what became the International World Wide Web Conference. It was held on May 25 to 27, 1994 in Geneva, Switzerland. The conference had 380 participants, who were accepted out of 800 applicants. It has been referred to as the "Woodstock of the Web".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">François Flückiger</span> Computer scientist

François Flückiger is a French computer scientist who worked at CERN. He was selected for induction in 2013 in the Internet Hall of Fame.

References

  1. Wall, Aaron. "History of Search Engines: From 1945 to Google Today". Search Engine History. Retrieved 2017-05-16.
  2. "The WWW Virtual Library". vlib.org. Retrieved 29 July 2022.
  3. "The WWW Virtual Library". vlib.org.uk. UK. Retrieved 29 July 2022.
  4. Gillies, James; Gillies, Robert (2000). How the Web was Born: The Story of the World Wide Web. Oxford University Press. p. 245. ISBN   978-0192862075.
  5. 1 2 "History of the Virtual Library". The WWW Virtual Library. Retrieved 29 July 2022.
  6. "WWW-VL History Central Catalogue". vlib.iue.it. Retrieved 29 July 2022.
  7. "About the WWW-VL History Central Catalogue". WWW-VL History Central Catalogue. Retrieved 29 July 2022.
  8. Karp, Cary (October–December 1999). "Setting root on the Internet: Establishing a network identity for the museum community". Museum International . 51 (4). UNESCO: 8–13. doi:10.1111/1468-0033.00223.
  9. "Documents for the History of the destruction of the WWW-VL old project at vlib.org/interarb.com.e". Archived from the original on 4 December 2014. Retrieved 17 Aug 2023.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)