Search - Subject - Top of the Web
Browse information on the World Wide Web by topic; subject-oriented Webs are arranged hierarchically according to subjects which are broken down into topics and sub-topics; subject trees are the Web's oldest information structure and were the sole navigation tool used by the ancient Geeks; in a subject tree, you navigate down through successive Web pages to find links of interest; or you can search the annotations in the subject directory itself about the Web sites included in it; see also:
user-generated navigation,
Top site lists for more selective subject-oriented lists or
lookup resources for specific, professionally-edited topic lookups
- DMOZ: Open Directory Project; Collaboratively edited, built in the spirit of Open Source, this project provides links to thousands and thousands of topic areas; its contents are available to other sites, so this subject tree serves as the "guts" for many other search portals; the clean, no-nonsense design and editorial diversity make this an excellent subject tree; it shows the value of human editors; weakness exists where no human editor is working diligently on a topic area; DMOZ is an acronym for Directory Mozilla because the Open Directory Project (ODP) is loosely associated with the Mozilla Web browser project; sites can get listed for free in the ODP; Google provides this directory with entries sorted by Google PageRank order
- Yahoo: Subject directory; an edited compilation of resources on many topics; sites need to pay a fee to get listed in Yahoo; the oldest major subject trees on the Web; listings seem incomplete in many places; paid advertisements and paid entries make it difficult to get a good sense of what are the best or more useful sites
- LookSmart: Subject directory; serves as the "guts" to other search sites; listings are fairly selective and this results in fewer, but better quality matches to your search
- LII: Librarians' Index to the Internet; librarian approach to categorize and indexing the vast information space of the Internet; this directory has become more valuable as Web users realize that selectivity and intelligent organization of information has become more and more important; stated mission is "to provide a well-organized point of access for reliable, trustworthy, librarian-selected Internet resources, serving California, the nation, and the world."
- INFOMINE: librarian-built directory of scholarly Internet information sources; resources relevant to faculty, students, and research staff at the university level; databases, electronic journals, electronic books, bulletin boards, mailing lists, online library card catalogs, articles, directories of researchers; organized for keyword searching of the collection as well as subject/topic browsing
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