Genres on the Web

[Boyd R. Collins]

The Infofilter project is an attempt by librarians to create useful review
criteria to Web sites and apply them by writing reviews.  So far we have
managed to refine our criteria fairly well and we've got a Web site for
those interested: http://www.usc.edu/users/help/flick/Infofilter/.
Currently, we are debating the different genres of materials on the Web in
an effort to come up with appropriate criteria for each category.  Here is
the list as we currently have it:

etext sources
statistical sources, interactive and static
searchable databases
simulations
games
collections of links focused on a special subject
electronic journals and magazines
compilations of information in a specialty (much full text information as
opposed to pages consisting mainly of links)
news sources
directories (searchable and static), phone, map, schedules, other
corporate home pages (corporate reports online)
classified advertisements
collections of historical documents
organization and association home pages
collections of reviews (software, movies, books, TV, etc.)
advertising pages for various products
personal pages (including individual resume pages)
School and University home pages
search engines

Obviously, this list is far from exhaustive.  We are having a contest to see
how many useful categories we can come up with of Web site types, and those
in our sister-list, Web4Lib, are invited to participate.  The final result
we hope will be a useful classification system for Web which will be the
basis for reviewing criteria.  Please help us bring some sanity (or at least
a different variety of insanity) to the Web.


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Boyd R. Collins
Information Technology Librarian, Alexander Library
Rutgers University  
New Brunswick, NJ 08903     
(908) 656-1493 (home)
(908) 932-8573 (office)
Infofilter page: http://www.usc.edu/users/help/flick/Infofilter/