VCL (Vixen Controlled Library)
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The VCL (Vixen Controlled Library) is the world's largest nearly-uncensored art gallery of furry and anthropomorphic material.
VCL was originally an abbreviation for "Velan Central Library" that dated back to the days when its founding administrator, Brian W. Antoine, provided public ftp access to his personal collection of furry art; the "Velan" in the name - the adjectival form of "Velar" - was taken from a location in a series of furry stories written by Brian.
However, when the archive moved to a new location at the student computer society network at the University of Linköping, Sweden, Brian suggested that the term "Velar" should not be used any longer, and the archive was renamed to just "VCL". Calling the archive "Vixen Controlled Library" is not officially recognized, but has nonetheless become common in furry fandom, and there is also a regular joke among some contributors to think up new meanings for the abbreviation "VCL".
The VCL is currently administrated by Chris "Ch'marr" Cogdon, as well as a team of assessors who freely spend their time ensuring that the art and literature uploaded to the VCL shows both artistic maturity and attention to presentation. The administration recently marked the occaision of the 300,000 image uploaded with a quiet topic on the VCL's web forum. This November, they will be celebrating the VCL's 10th anniversary, making it one of the longest-lived anthropomorphic art libraries on the internet.
In January, 2005, the main site in Sweden ceased to host art for ostensibly political reasons, instead only hosting the VCL's web forums. This left only the US server to bear the load, and it was nearly overwhelmed with all the traffic that was now redirected from the Sweden server. For a short time, this left the US server nearly overloaded, but the administrator was able to sort the situation out quickly and implemented several solutions. Currently, several mirrors have helped shoulder the burden, though the old US site still remains foremost among them.
- http://us.vclart.net/vcl/, main site located in California, USA.
- http://nas-kan.vclart.net/vcl/, located in Washington, USA.
- http://orcas.vclart.net/vcl/, located in Texas, USA.