Summary

  • The 2000 constitution identified members through a database at a specified URL; a March 2005 footnote explained why that address was technically obsolete.
  • Maintainers owned their subject sites, while the council ran the common catalogue, domain and membership machinery.

A server can move in an afternoon. A constitution has opinions about moving.

On 7 August 2000, the WWW Virtual Library’s members adopted a constitution that put an unusually specific address into Article IV: conbio.rice.edu/vl/database/. The list of maintainers held there constituted the association’s membership. Members in good standing could vote and stand for the council. A database address had acquired a second job as a constitutional reference.

By March 2005, services had been brought together on vlib.org. A footnote to the constitution explained that the old link was no longer technically valid, mentioned redirects from conbio.net and said the member database was being recreated. The editors updated links elsewhere but kept this one in the formal wording. Their explanation sat outside the constitution. Even a hyperlink could demand a velvet rope.

Your pages, our catalogue

This was an association of people and institutions building annotated guides to particular subjects. Its product was expert selection: someone decided which resources deserved a place, and supplied enough description to make the choice useful.

The constitution reserved each member site’s content and intellectual property to that member. The council managed vlib.org, the central catalogue and database, and the mailing lists. It could require a subject guide to link upwards in the catalogue hierarchy. Ownership of a collection and management of the signposts belonged to different hands.

That arrangement remained visible in the October 2006 presentation at CERN. It described more than 200 individual virtual libraries maintained around the world, with autonomous, attributable subject expertise. Shared services included the central catalogue and search. The common front door helped a scattered collection look like somewhere a reader could actually visit.

A listing came before full membership

The bylaws made joining a process. An applicant sent a site’s URL to the secretary. Following council approval, the site received trial membership, entered the database and catalogue, and was announced to members. A month without objections brought full membership; unresolved objections could take the application to a membership vote.

A reader could therefore encounter a listed guide before its maintainer had completed admission. The catalogue and the membership roll needed to carry different meanings even when they described the same site.

Leaving was simpler. Members could withdraw any of their sites whenever they wished. Withdrawing every listed site ended membership automatically. The volunteer kept the work; the association lost a contribution and the departing contributor lost a place in its membership.

The old URL catches the whole bargain in miniature. The specialists supplied the shelves. The council kept the shared address book. Once that address book helped determine who could vote, maintaining it became part of running the association.