Virtual Library museums pages

The Virtual Library museums pages (VLmp) formed an early leading directory of online museums around the world.[1] The resource was founded by Jonathan Bowen in 1994, originally at the Oxford University Computing Laboratory in the United Kingdom,[2][3] It has been supported by the International Council of Museums (ICOM) and Museophile Limited.[4][5] as part of the World Wide Web Virtual Library, initiated by Tim Berners-Lee and later managed by Arthur Secret.[6] The main VLmp site moved to London South Bank University in the early 2000s and is now hosted as a wiki on Wikia.[7]

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),[8] was the first country to become involved. The MDA maintained the United Kingdom section of museums,[9] later the Collections Trust.[10] The Historisches Centrum Hagen has maintained and hosted pages for Germany.[11] Other countries actively participating included Romania.[12] In total, around 20 countries were involved.[4]

The directory was influential in the museum field during the 1990s and 2000s.[13][14] It was used as a standard starting point to find museums online.[15] It was useful for monitoring the growth of museums internationally online.[16] It was also used for online museum surveys.[17][18] It was recommended as an educational resource[19][20] and included a search facility.[21]