Subject Directories

Finding Information on the Internet: A Tutorial

Recommended Subject Directories
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The URL of this page is: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/SubjDirectories.html

Recommended General Subject Directories: Table of Features

Web Directories	Librarians' Internet Index www.lii.org	Infomine infomine.ucr.edu	About.com www.about.com	Google Directory directory.google.com	Yahoo! dir.yahoo.com
Size, type	Over 20,000. Compiled by public librarians. Highest quality sites only. Great, reliable annotations.	Over 125,000. Great, reliable annotations. Compiled by academic librarians from the University of California and elsewhere.	Over 2 million. Generally good annotations done by "Guides" with various levels of expertise.	About 5 million. Selected by the Open Directory Project and enhanced by Google searching and ranking. Often useful to find "better" results, especially on broad or widely covered topics.	About 4 million. Very short descriptions. Often useful, especially for popular and commercial topics.
Phrase searching (what's this?)	Yes. Use " "	Yes. Use " " \|term term\| requires exact match	Yes. Use " "	Yes. Use " "	Yes. Use " "
Boolean logic (what's this?)	AND implied between words. Also accepts OR and NOT, and ( ).	AND implied between words. Also accepts OR, NOT, and ( ).	No.	OR, capitalized, as in Google's web search engine.	Yes, as in Yahoo! Search web search engine.
Truncation (what's this?)	Use *. Also stems. Can turn off stemming ("fuzzy search") on Advanced Search page.	Use *. Also stems. Can turn stemming off. Use " " or \| \| to search exact terms.	Use *. Not accepted consistently.	No.	No.
Field searching	Advanced Search allows Boolean searching within subject, titles, description, parts of URLs, and more.	Select options under search box to limit to Author, Title, Subject, Keyword, Description, various subject categories, and more.	No.	Same as in Google's web search engine.	As in Yahoo! Search web search engine.

How to Find Subject-Focused Directories for a Specific Topic, Discipline, or Field

There are thousands of specialized directories on practically every subject. If you want an overview, or if you feel you've searched long enough, try to find one. Often they are done by experts -- self-proclaimed or heavily credentialed. Here are some ways to find them:

Use any of the Subject Directories above to find more specific directories. Here are some tips:

In the Librarians' Index or Infomine, look for your subject as you would for any other purpose, and keep your eyes open for sites that look like directories. Read through the descriptions. Sometimes these resources are identified as "Directories, "Virtual Libraries," or "Gateway Pages."
In Yahoo! and Google directories, try adding the terms web directories to your subject keyword term:

EXAMPLES:: civil war web directories; weddings web directories

In About.com, search by topic and look for pages that are described as "101" or "guides" or a "directory." About.com is written by "Guides" who, themselves, often are experts in the sections they manage. Sometimes they write excellent overviews of a topic.

Quick Links

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