Belinda Weaver is the Liaison Librarian for Journalism and Political Studies at the University of Queensland and the Web columnist for inCite.

Title: Making the Most of the Web

Abstract: New Web search sites and services are being announced all the time. Librarians often feel they need to look at and understand each new service as it appears: yet this may not be necessary, or even desirable. Many seemingly new services are often the product of re-packaging or of chaning partnerships and may offer nothing really new. It is still a chore finding the one good site out of the many hits the search engines retrieve. Fewer, more targeted results would be better than zillions. Yet people still seem mesmerised by big numbers (I got 50 000 hits) and services actively compete on database size (We're the biggest!). Yet less may be more. In the case of the more academic subject directories such as BUBL and the WWWVL, this is certainly true - fewer hits, greater relevance. It can be better to browse rather than search. Searching will continue to be important for some time to come.

However, I genrally suggest searching as a last resort - when all other methods have failed. My own strategy is to concentrate more on sources of information. My first question is: who is likely to publish that information? If I can answer that, half the job is done: it remains only to track down the source.

Search engines may assist that process. Other means - online directories of organisations, virtual encyclopaedias and dictionaries, government websites - may be quicker. Don't boldly go where on-one has gone before - make use of the expertise that already exists. If nothing out there really fits for you, or for your users, remember that the best portal may be the one you build yourself!

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