The Miguel de Cervantes Virtual Library (MCVL; in , BVMC) is a large-scale

digital library A digital library (also called an online library, an internet library, a digital repository, a library without walls, or a digital collection) is an online database of digital resources that can include text, still images, audio, video, digital ...

project, hosted and maintained by the

University of Alicante The University of Alicante (, ; , ; also known by the acronym ''UA'') was established in 1979 on the basis of the Center for University Studies (CEU), which was founded in 1968. The university main campus is located in San Vicente del Raspeig/San ...

Alicante Alicante (, , ; ; ; officially: ''/'' ) is a city and municipalities of Spain, municipality in the Valencian Community, Spain. It is the capital of the province of Alicante and a historic Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean port. The population ...

Spain Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...

. It comprises the largest

open-access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 de ...

repository of digitised

Spanish-language Spanish () or Castilian () is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin spoken on the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. Today, it is a world language, gl ...

historical texts and literature from the

Ibero-American Ibero-America (, ) or Iberian America is generally considered to be the region in the Americas comprising countries or territories where Spanish or Portuguese are predominant languages (usually former territories of Spain or Portugal). Spain and ...

world. When officially launched in 1999, the BVMC was the first

digital archive An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials, in any medium, or the physical facility in which they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organi ...

of Spanish-language texts on the

internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

, initially reproducing some 2,000 individual works by 400 of the most significant authors in

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas **Spanish cuisine **Spanish history **Spanish culture ...

, Latin American literary and Hispanic Africa. By 2005–2006 the number of registered and available works had reached over 22,000. The library is named for

Miguel de Cervantes Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra ( ; ; 29 September 1547 (assumed) – 22 April 1616 Old Style and New Style dates, NS) was a Spanish writer widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language and one of the world's pre-eminent novelist ...

, the famous 16th-century Spanish author and one of the most illustrious names in world literary history. From its inception in 1999, this library has chosen to apply structural markup based on

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...

and the TEI encoding scheme for the creation of its documents.

Notes

References

* * * *

External links

Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes
main website Spanish digital libraries Open-access archives Spanish literature University of Alicante 1999 establishments in Spain Libraries established in 1999 {{Spain-university-stub