The World-Wide Web Virtual Library's History Index began operations in March of 1993 as HNSource, a lynx-based information server. In September of 1993, at the invitation of Arthur Secret, who had been assigned by W3.org the task of developing a World- Wide Web index, HTTP functions were added to HNSource, which then assumed the additional identity of The History Index, the first of the World-Wide Web Virtual Library's index sites.

For several years, this site was maintained as a single megapage, with categories being thrown off as separate files only when it was necessary to keep the Index from becoming larger than 275 Kb. As the number of History-related sites increased, it became more difficult to maintain satisfactory coverage, to stay abreast of changed addresses and non-operative URLs, and to keep an optimum balance between broad coverage and an effective level of selectivity. The establishment of an integrated and international network of indexes appeared to be the best solution to these problems, and several maintainers of major gateways outside of WWW-VL joined to lay the foundations for such a network. After extensive discussion within this group, a set of common standards for network sites was established, and the group began bringing their individual sites into conformity with those standards.