18.578 move of the WWW-VL History Central Catalogue

               Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 18, No. 578.
       Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
                   www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/
                        www.princeton.edu/humanist/
                     Submit to: humanist_at_princeton.edu

         Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 08:44:20 +0000
         From: "Noiret, Serge" <Serge.Noiret_at_IUE.it>
         Subject: WWW-VL HISTORY CENTRAL CATALOGUE moved

Information about the history web portal WWW VL History Central
catalogue at vlib.iue.it.

As you may have already known, the year 2004 was a crucial year for the
WWW-VL HISTORY CENTRAL CATALOGUE created in 1993-1994 at the University
of Kansas, Lawrence. Its former maintainer and creator, Prof. Lynn
H. Nelson, retired in March 2004. Our ongoing work and goals continue to
follow what this web history pioneer decided to inaugurate more than ten
years ago: to maintain a high standard history portal as part of the
oldest web project founded by Tim Berners-Lee, the WWW Virtual library,
http://vlib.org with the VLIB main history section at
http://vlib.org/History.

Hundreds of web pages belonging to the History Central catalogue were
moved from Lawrence, Kansas, in the USA to Florence in Italy at the EUI
(European University Institute). The new "physical" location of such a
non-commercial virtual project is now in Italy, Europe, at the
European University Institute (EUI in English, IUE in Italian), a
postgraduate and post-doctoral European and International university in
the social sciences, law and history (http://www.iue.it).

Our main task was first to have the server able to receive all the
contributions of the different editors and secondly, to promote with new
collaborators and, especially I hope, with new "institutional"
collaborators, through the world, the all WWW VL History Network.

In this sense, if all the persons and the institutions which promised in
2004 to maintain, edit and promote single History Virtual Libraries,
will firmly confirm their wish to contribute to the project, we will
continue to grow and develop our non-commercial activities widely like
our predecessors.

Currently we are many editors
[http://vlib.iue.it/history/about/maintainers.html] and many others
accepted recently to become maintainers of single VL and join our
important partners like the History Journals Guide
(http://www.history-journals.de/) or the International Institute for
Social History in Amsterdam which is editing the WWW-VL Women History,
(http://www.iisg.nl/~womhist/vivalink.html), the WWW-VL Labor History
http://www.iisg.nl/~w3vl/) or the NEHA ()Netherlands Economic History
Archives) which is editing the WWW-VL Economic and Business history
(http://www.neha.nl/w3vl/) or the Wellcome Trust for the History of
Medicine in London which is maintaining the MedHist, the WWW-VL Medicine
History (http://medhist.ac.uk/) etc..

Recently, the WWW-VL European Integration History Index was inaugurated
as a joint project between the CVCE (Centre Virtuel pour l'Histoire de
l'Europe) in Luxembourg, (www.ena.lu) and the Historical Archives of the
European Union in Florence, Italy (http://www.iue.it/ECArchives/);
WWW-VL History of the Classical World is maintained at the Bologna
University, Italy; very soon a new index for Financial and Banking
history will be created at the EABH, European Association for Banking
History in Frankfurt, [http://www.bankinghistory.de/], a WWW-VL medieval
history index will be edited by the University of Naples and Palermo,
etc..

What remains after 11 years of a non-profit existence based on volunteer
work of single librarians still our main aim, is to serve the web
community recruiting new maintainers locally at the EUI in Florence and
remotely, where editors are keeping their VL as part of the History
Network divided in 4 broad categories: 1.Research - 2.Topics -
3.Countries - 4.Eras.

If you feel you would like to dedicate some time to a Virtual Library in
History, please just write to us (serge.noiret_at_iue.it; imartin_at_iue.it)
and become part of our worldwide community of virtual librarians.
Indeed, several libraries at vlib.iue.it are asking for a new maintainer
(http://vlib.iue.it/history/about/without-maintainers.html) and we
accept contribution if they are stable, non commercial, well informed
and good historical contribution in all historical fields.

You have only to follow very few general rules and criteria's
(http://vlib.iue.it/history/about/about.html).

Web ranking are placing quite high the WWW Virtual Library as a whole;
some history virtual libraries belonging to the project (have a look in
Google for History United States, European Integration History, Iraq
History, Search Engines History, History Spain or History Italy, History
Russia, etc..). Our most important Index and most visited one is the
United States History Index with his many editors coordinated by Georges
Laughead Jr. from the Kansas Heritage Group,
(http://vlib.iue.it/history/USA/)

At the moment, looking for a so general term like "history" in Yahoo
will take you to the 12th listed position.

This mean also that contributing to this old, stable and well know
worldwide project is a good -even if indirect- contribution for the
visibility on the web, of your own scientific institution and your own
capacity of offering to the world wide community a research and teaching
tool for the web.

With all my best wishes

Serge Noiret

Co-Maintainer of the WWW-VL History Central Catalogue at
[http://vlib.iue.it/]
History Information Specialist
PhD. in Contemporary History
European University Institute
Badia Fiesolana, Via dei Roccettini 9
50016 SAN DOMENICO (FI) - Italia
Tel.: +39-0554685-348 ~ Fax +39-0554685-283
CV: [http://www.iue.it/Personal/Staff/Noiret/noiret.html]
Received on Thu Feb 10 2005 - 03:55:20 EST