VL Irrigation & Hydrology Background

History

Fig. 1: The WWW Virtual Library Irrigation & Hydrology at Sakia.org – Historic website, 2005

Early development (1995–1997)

The original World Wide Web Virtual Library Irrigation & Hydrology (short: VL Irrigation & Hydrology) was first established in 1995, providing selected and structured information related to the wider areas of irrigation and hydrology. Initially, it consisted mainly of manually screened and classified links pointing to relevant sources on the Internet.

With time, it became apparent that insufficient relevant information was available online. Efforts were therefore made to improve the situation by directly publishing information online rather than merely referencing existing sources. The IRRISOFT database on irrigation and hydrology software [Stein, 1996] was one of the major projects that evolved from this need and was also established in 1995.

The Virtual Library and the early Web

The VL Irrigation & Hydrology forms one of the components of the worldwide WWW Virtual Library (VL) catalogue, the oldest catalogue of the World Wide Web.

The VL was started by Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of HTML and the World Wide Web itself. Unlike commercial catalogues, it was run by a loose confederation of volunteers who compiled pages of key links for particular subject areas in which they were experts [Manning, 2002].

In the early days of the web, no comprehensive search engines existed. There were no convenient search tools such as Google, Lycos or AltaVista capable of indexing a substantial proportion of the web as search engines do today. Google, for example, celebrated its fifth anniversary in September 2003.

Before the emergence of search engines, finding information largely depended on knowing where to look. It was the era of web catalogues. Numerous individuals began building their own catalogues to assist the Internet community by describing, linking and referencing sources they knew.

This was also how Yahoo began in 1994. Some of these initiatives joined the WWW Virtual Library, which assisted in structuring content within a loose thematic hierarchy. Despite its age and the labour-intensive process of manually screening and adding information, the WWW Virtual Library survived for many years.

Sakia and re-establishment

The VL Irrigation & Hydrology went through several phases of modernisation, leading to the integration of a crawler with a search function called Sakia, established in 1997.

Following major restructuring at the University of Kassel, the work of the department hosting these services could no longer be continued. Due to technical, financial and time constraints, the VL Irrigation & Hydrology could unfortunately no longer be maintained and updated as originally anticipated.

Nevertheless, arrangements were made to keep the original sources online, allowing their continuation and ultimately leading to the re-establishment of the WWW Virtual Library Irrigation & Hydrology in November 2003 as part of the Sakia.org system on a standalone server.

Transition to online publications

With the re-launch, greater emphasis was placed on providing freely accessible full-text online publications.

In late 2003, the VL Irrigation & Hydrology was revived and restructured once again. With developments on the Internet and changing community needs, a new emphasis for the service was defined, allowing more targeted information services to be provided.

The main objective of the VL Irrigation & Hydrology has not changed significantly but has moved closer to what it was always intended to be—a virtual library. The service aimed to provide quality-controlled full-text publications and information online.

The new Virtual Library Irrigation & Hydrology became a thematic catalogue for online publications within the Sakia.org system. While still modest in scope, it brought together publications and information of different types and origins within a defined structure. It provided opportunities to republish and share relevant reviewed articles online.

Dormancy

Due to major financial setbacks, hardware failure and time constraints, the system became dormant in November 2015.

Reference

• The WWW Virtual Library - Central catalogue
  ( https://www.vlib.org/ )
• The WWW Virtual Library - History of the Virtual Library
  ( https://vlib.org/admin/history )
• Manning, G., 2002: About the Virtual Library.-
  ( https://vlib.org/admin/AboutVL )
• Stein, T.-M., 2004:
  Sakia.org - An online knowledge exchange and communication initiative in the area of land and water.-
  The Society of Engineering in Agriculture Biennial Conference “To Bourke & Back”, 14–16 September 2004.
  ( VL Irrigation & Hydrology - vl_ref_id_x_0013 )