A human interface to the Web

The WWW Virtual Library (VL), created by humans for humans, is the oldest catalogue of the Web. It was conceived in 1991 by Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of HTML and of the Web itself. Unlike commercial catalogues, it is run by a group of volunteers who compile pages of key links for particular areas in which they have the expertise. Even though VL isn't the biggest index of the Web, its pages are widely recognised as being amongst the highest quality guides to particular sections of the Web.

The main sections of the Virtual Library are divided into 16 sections. These are Agriculture, the Arts, Business and Economics, Communications and Media, Computing and Computer Science, Education, Engineering, Humanities and Humanistic Studies, Information and Libraries, International Affairs, Law, Natural Sciences and Mathematics, Recreation, Regional Studies, Social and Behavioural Sciences, and Society. Among the myriad of topics are: Irrigation, Livestock, Poultry Science, Art History, Classical Music, Theatre and Drama, Finance, Marketing, Transportation, Broadcasters, Publishers, Telecommunications, Computing and Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, Cryptography, Logic Programming, Primary Education, Secondary Education, Tertiary Education, Architecture, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, History, Languages and Linguistics, Museums, Information Quality, Knowledge Management, Libraries, International Relations and Security, Sustainable Development, Arbitration, Forensic Toxicology, Legal History, Biosciences, Earth Science, Medicine and Health, Physics, Gardening, Recreation and Games, Sport, African studies, Asian, studies, Latin American studies, European studies, Anthropology, Archaeology, Population and Development Studies, Peoples, Religion, and Gender Studies. Despite the very arduous way of manual screening and adding information, the WWW Virtual Library has created a niche for itself on the web. Despite the availability of newer search engines Virtual Library is still amongst the highest-quality guides to particular sections of the web.

The Virtual Library has been raved about its invaluable role as a gateway for enormous information on various topics. The Science Advisory Board (www.scienceboard.net) has this to say about the Virtual Library's Bio Science links -"This is a gateway for enormous information of biological sciences. The virtual library system provides detailed study materials for almost all branches of biological sciences. Once you jump in you'll find out how good they are."

The Internet Researcher, a guide designed to help find Internet resources in chemistry, physics, and related disciplines, recommends Virtual Library for Physics as a great place to start searching for the most general to very technical information. "Yes indeed! You would find The Virtual Library: Physics, at http://vlib.org/Physics, with links to university departments, organisations, research information, and specialty sites on physics topics: astronomy, energy, geophysics, nuclear physics, general physics and more. And, the Internet Resources for Journalists too finds WWW Virtual Library as a large and fairly comprehensive list of "top starting point" resources.

The main Virtual Library Website was redesigned in 2005. Many old or dead individual Virtual Libraries have been removed from the index. It consists of 263 individual catalogues each maintained by its own 'librarian. 'Maintainers come from around different parts of the world and include experts from academia, industry and the voluntary sector. To carryout a text search of the WWW Virtual Library you could use the VL Search engine. Otherwise, thus far, the only functional part of this mapping of VL topics is a geographic index.

The WWW VL is working towards presenting interfaces to its core materials in the 'six UN languages, 'namely Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish The Virtual Library's search engine Vl search has search interfaces in Arabic, English, French and Spanish and currently allows searching of over seventy thousand individual VL pages, which in turn provide a six figure number of links to external resources. If you maintain a superlative guide to a specialised area of the Web the Virtual Library would be happy to consider to add your 'library. 'More details on how to include your website in the Virtual Library can be found at http://vlib.org/admin/join.

Source: Deccan Herald