Virtual Health Library
The Virtual Health Library (VHL) (Biblioteca Virtual en Salud, BVS) is an institution that employs the World Wide Web to "improve access to reliable, locally relevant information [on health and health sciences] for health-professionals, researchers, academics, educators, decision makers, and the general public". BVSes are organized under the auspices of the Pan-American Health Organization and the World Health Organization. VHL is a digital library and common space for the convergence of the cooperative work of producers, intermediaries, and users of information on healthcare science, built and developed by the Latin American and Caribbean Center on Health Sciences Information (also known as BIREME) in 1998. The VHL promotes the development of a network of sources of scientific and technical information with universal access on the internet. BIREME has envisioned the VHL as a new model for the management of information and knowledge, which includes the cooperation and convergence between institutions, systems, networks, and initiatives of producers, intermediaries, and users in the operation of networks of local, national, regional and international information sources favoring open and universal access. Today, every country in Latin America and the Caribbean regions participates either directly or indirectly in the cooperative products and services offered by the