Using Subject Directories

A subject directory is an organized collection of sites categorized and maintained by humans who are subject experts. There are two types of directories: academic and commercial. Academic directories are professional directories that tend to be created and maintained by librarians and subject experts. Links are carefully selected and tend to be annotated. Librarian's Index to the Internet is an example of an academic directory. Commercial portals or directories serve the general public and are in business to make money. Usually they have banners or advertising for revenue. They may offer a wide variety of other services including chat rooms, email, calendars, and more. Go is an example of a commercial directory. Both of these types of directories may have a search engine to search their databases.

Subject directories are often called subject "trees" because they start with a few main categories and then branch out into subcategories, topics, and subtopics. As an examples, let's say I was concerned about running with a knee injury and wanted to do a little research on if running would cause more injury. I may go to one of the main categories first: Health; then to Fitness; then to Sports Medicine; and then to one of the Sports Medicine agencies. Is there another way you might have tried to follow the hierarchical approach to find information about running with a knee injury?

Practice Exercises on Subject Directories
Go to Using Subject Directories - A Tutorial and scroll down to the practice exercises.

1. In the next 10 minutes, practice several of  the exercises.
2. Discuss with the whole group what directory that you found most useful.

Take a few minutes to check the list of Subject Directories before going on to the next section.
 

On to Using Search Engines for the Next Activity
 
 

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