The Labyrinth Medieval Studies Website

Abstract

The Labyrinth medieval studies website was the first website in the world in the humanities, created by Deborah Everhart and Martin Irvine at Georgetown University in 1993. It is also the longest continuously available website in the humanities, still available at http://labyrinth.georgetown.edu at the time this archive was created in 2021. The history of this website reflects not only the organization of medieval studies primary and secondary resources from around the world, but also the development of scholarly communities on the web, the evolution of research and pedagogical uses of online resources, and fundamental changes in authorship, textuality, and equitable access to resources. The narrative describes how medieval studies scholars and students first navigated hypertext within documents and on the web, first experienced a hybrid online/in-person conference, developed the first websites for professional societies, and rapidly evolved other scholarly practices to benefit from the unprecedented changes enabled by web technologies. This archive includes the Labyrinth Narrative (story and explanation); an Archiving Dossier Narrative (about the archive); History and Documentation (including information about the creators and contributors, a timeline, WorldCat Catalogue references, a bibliography of publications and presentations by the creators, citations and references to the Labyrinth, a list of Internet Archive documentation, and a description of artifacts included in the archive); the Labyrinth files in their original formats (HTML and ColdFusion); and 3rd party documentation of the Labyrinth website (Internet Archive captures).