Searching the World Wide Web
Our Favorite Subject Directories
The Open Learning team has found the following subject directories
to be quite useful. Subject directories allow you to search for
information on a particular topic by maintaining a hierarchical
list of categories. You can learn more about subject directories
and other search tools in Starting
your Quest
From the many varieties of subject directories on the Web, we have
found that Yahoo!,
The Scout
Report Archives, The
Librarian's Index to the Internet, Infomine,
and About.Com
are useful places to begin. Each of these is described below.
Yahoo! was one of the Web's first large general subject directories.
Even today, it is one of the fastest sites on the Web. It's size,
depth and speed are sufficient reasons for this to be your first
stop when searching through web directories.
You can either browse through Yahoo!'s categorically arranged pages,
or search the pages using keywords and phrases. The search results
include both Yahoo!'s database as well as that of the search engine
Google. Yahoo!
has a very detailed Help
Section that makes it easy to understand the site. We like Yahoo!
because of its speed and reasonable accuracy in cataloguing the
web. We also like the fact that Yahoo! allows us to recommend sites
that we feel are worth categorizing.
This directory is an academic project maintained by the University
of Wisconsin in the United States of America and is a fabulous
academic resource on the Web. It is, in its own words,
"of interest to researchers and educators" and the almost
12,000 sites indexed here represent a small, but very useful
section of the Web.
The Scout Report Archives uses library standards to classify the
various sites. It also provides keyword search ability and is a
specially good place to start your research projects. An easy to
read Help
Section gives additional tips on using the site. We like The
Scout Report Archives because of the relevance of its content, especially
as a research resource.
The Librarians' Index to the Internet is similar to, but smaller
than, The Scout Report Archives. It is maintained at the Berkely
Digital Library SunSITE and covers almost 8,000 web sites indexed
according to library standards. In addition to providing keyword
search features, the site also provides easy access to the hierarchical
categories similar to Yahoo! as well as a well-written Help
Page.
We like this site for almost the same reasons as we like the Scout
Report Archives. We do, however, feel that the site's focus on mainly
American websites limits is value at times.
Supported by a number of Universities in California, Infomine is
a collection of over 22,000 annotated and searchable Internet resources.
In addition to ordinary website links, Infomine also catalogues
resources of particular interest to researchers, teachers and educators
such as project sites, electronic journals and books, and web bulletins
and list servers. The site has a Help
Page which provides some tips on conducting a search.
We often browse through Infomine in order to learn about new resources
on specific teaching-related topics. We find the search feature
to be functional, although not as powerful as some of the other
directories.
About.com is another very useful general purpose directory. It
contains annotated links to over 1 million websites. The annotations
and links are maintained by a large number of "Guides"--experts
in given subject areas--and are searchable by keywords and phrases.
Unlike the other directories listed here, About.com has a more informal
and conversational style, usually with an in-depth coverage of topics.
This makes the site seem more "human" and generally more
suitable for casual browsing as well as serious research. The site
also has particularly strong sections related to education and information
technology.
We like the site because of its vast, yet detailed coverage. We
also like the site because it provides information and biographies
on all the topic experts.
Search a bibliographic database of more than 1.1 million citations
on education topics going back to 1966. Over 100000 full text available
for free.
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Page Last Updated: April 21, 2008
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