Organizing Web Information

[Hal Kirkwood]

Hello all....

Great thread.  Just something to toss into the fire....

As was mentioned sometime ago (at the beginning of this thread? weeks ago?)
Another search engine and classification scheme that competes with Meta
Tags is something called IDML.  The search engine is at
http://www.identify.com/  It's worth taking a look at...IDML, like Meta
tags, is basically a subset of HTML.  While its primary focus appears to be
the indexing and searching of products (and thus e-commerce...the buzzword
of business this week) on the Web there is also a Web sites search choice.
It is set-up using a controlled 'ontology' (their word) so that the web
page creator can index their own sites or you can have an agent complete
the indexing for you.

I have used some Meta tags and have tried the IDML...the IDML seems a bit
less unwieldy as compared to the Meta tags.  Is it the end all be all for
indexing sites....no...at least not yet.

>> Why reinvent the wheel?  Why have dozen's and dozen's of different catalogs
>> of Web sites?  Why not just set some new AACR2 standards for cataloging Web
>> sites, and then let the big boys handle the work?
>
>I agree with many of the points made in this wonderful thread.  I'd like
>to see more search engines, more classification schemes, and, although I
>haven't seen one yet that fits the label, more "intelligent agents".

It seems that this may become a viable example of the above comment...a new
search engine/classification scheme...that uses an intelligent agent.

I completely agree with Lou's comment about any of these search engines
standing alone.   While AltaVista's Keyword searching can be useful at
times..it can also be completely overwhelming to the point of uselessness.
The search engine creators will (I think) be pressured by market forces to
create better, more useful engines.  The other dilemma is with all of these
search engines...they are either automatically indexed by robots (and thus
not very effectively), or they are indexed by a team of indexers
(Yahoo....which of course means there is going to be a delay), or by the
Webmasters (Identify,) which goes back to the thread that the Webmaster may
know the site but may not know how to effectively index/catalog it so that
people will be able to find it.  There is a happy user medium in there
somewhere.

> I'm looking
>forward to the day when information users (and librarians themselves)
>recognize that these tools and systems can't stand alone, but need to be
>integrated by human information specialists to provide much of serious
>value.


Just my $.02

-hal

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Hal Kirkwood                                  hkirk at uno.cc.geneseo.edu

Assistant Librarian                        hkirk at hotmail.com

S.U.N.Y. at Geneseo

1 College Circle    Geneseo, NY 14454
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My opinions do not represent the university.
Personal Home Page  http://137.238.50.66/~hal/hal.html

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