October 06, 2003
ResearchGuide: a tool for building subject guides
THIS WEEK, NetSpeak explores a tool that can be used for developing subject guides by subject experts/librarians through a web interface.
Though search engines such as Google and AllTheWeb.com are the major tools employed by most netizens for locating Net resources, these have some obvious drawbacks. For example, a researcher looking for information sources related to a subject, however good he is with search engines, may not be able to collect all the relevant links with a single query. The lack of a proper mechanism to evaluate the quality of the search output is another deficiency. These limitations of search engines have led to the creation of alternative search tools and `subject guides' is one such alternative.
Though search engines such as Google and AllTheWeb.com are the major tools employed by most netizens for locating Net resources, these have some obvious drawbacks. For example, a researcher looking for information sources related to a subject, however good he is with search engines, may not be able to collect all the relevant links with a single query. The lack of a proper mechanism to evaluate the quality of the search output is another deficiency. These limitations of search engines have led to the creation of alternative search tools and `subject guides' is one such alternative.
