I went to the library to return The Visible Librarian and I was going to check out The Invisible Web – but after picking it up off of the shelf I saw Weaving the Web and just had to change my mind.
Weaving the Web is written by Tim Bernes-Lee the sub-title reads “The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web by Its Inventor”.
I was a little worried about reading a book written by an engineer – I thought it would be more technical than I wanted – but this book is great! I can’t seem to put it down. It’s a little hard to read when he talks about programs and machines that were before my time – but other than that – I highly recommend this book – and I’m only 1/2 way through.
The part I like the best so far? That a librarian is responsible for the web making it’s way out of Berners-Lee’s workplace (CERN) – Louise Addis of Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC).
She saw [the web] as a godsend for their rather sophisticated but mainframe-bound library system, and a way to make SLAC’s substantial internal catalogue of online documents available to physicists worldwide. Louise persuaded a colleague who developed open tools for her to write the appropriate program, and under Louise’s encouragement SLAC started the first Web server outside of CERN.
(Quote from Pg 45-46.)
How cool is that?? If you’re interested in the history of the web get out there and find a copy of this book.
[...] I mentioned that I was half way through Tim Berners-Lee’s Weaving the Web last week – I also mentioned that I couldn’t put it down – well I found a way to. [...]