A New Tradition - The World Wide Web

Currency

• generally very up-to-date, often reflecting changes in major world events quickly
• may be updated within minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, depends on the source

Ease of Use

• "point and click in the graphical environment"
• dependent upon the quality page/site design, e.g. navigating and moving around
• availability and quality of search tools varies

Authority

• the Web has existed only since 1991
• no single publisher or information provider
• anyone may put information on the Web
• no rules enforcing quality control or veracity
• no one person or institutional entity is "in charge"

Search Terms

• no "controlled vocabulary"
• no thesaurus
• keyword or free-text or natural language

Search Strategy

• depends on where you look for information
• multiple points of entry
• use of concepts, boolean operators, adjacency, other techniques critical
• directory services - hierarchical subject trees
• search engines
• may need to look in more than one place for comprehensive results

Types and Amount of Information

• web pages
• discussion list messages (usenet, newsgroups, netnews)
• software
• images
• millions of pages "out there", much of it full-text