Internet Skills
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Topic 1
Finding information and resources in the Internet
Subject directories
Created by Foundation for Local Development – Thailand
www.fldasia.org
July 2013
Internet Skills
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Subject Directories 2
Ethnic Peace Resources Project (www.eprpinformation.org)
Introduction
Subject directories are lists of websites organized by subject. Universities, libraries,
organizations, and even volunteers have created these directories to catalog portions of
the Web. Note that most directories provide a search engine searching within the
directory.
When to use directories? Directories are useful for general topics, for topics that you
don't know much about, or for in-depth research.
There are two basic types of directories:
ACADEMIC AND PROFESSIONAL DIRECTORIES
They are often created and maintained by subject experts to support the needs of
researchers. Some directories are the result of many years of intellectual effort and can
be very helpful subject directories when doing serious research on the Web.
INFOMINE (http://infomine.ucr.edu/), from the University of California, is a good
example of an academic directory.
Click Search Tips to know basic and advanced Infomine searching techniques.
Internet Skills
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Subject Directories 3
Ethnic Peace Resources Project (www.eprpinformation.org)
Directories featured on COMMERCIAL PORTALS
They cater to the general public. The Yahoo! Directory (http://dir.yahoo.com/) is an
example of a directory that is part of a famous commercial portal.
Subject directories differ significantly in selectivity. For example, the editors of the
Yahoo! directory do not carefully evaluate user-submitted content when adding Web
pages to their database. It is therefore large but not a reliable research source
and should be used with caution. In contrast, the INFOMINE editors select only
those sources considered useful to the academic and research community.
Examples of Subject Directories:
1. http://www.dmoz.org/ (significant resource collection spanning more than
one million categories compiled by thousands of volunteer editors)
2. http://www.virtuallrc.com/ (maintained by teachers, librarians)
Academic directories :
3. http://www.academicinfo.net/subject-guides
4. http://bubl.ac.uk/ (UK funded project of selective resources from the
Centre for Digital Library Research of Strathclyde University in Glasgow,
Scotland. ceased updating in April 2011)
5. http://vlib.org/ (guides to many disciplines)
The following site provides a list of directories, according to the topic you are
interested in: http://www.greatdirectories.org/directories.html
Internet Skills
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Subject Directories 4
Ethnic Peace Resources Project (www.eprpinformation.org)
Specific directories
Some website are focused on some subject (e.g. science) or country, such as
Online Burma Library
http://www.burmalibrary.org/index.php
Sources
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Use Internet To Learn – topic 1; version 2.4 November 2012
Foundation for Local Development – Thailand; www.fldasia.org