The Invisible Web

Until I read the class notes for Lesson 11, I had never heard of the invisible or deep web. I did, of course, realize that vast amounts of information are unavailable via search engines such as Google--mainly information that is fee-based, such as many articles from scholarly journals.

When I read the Berkeley tutorial "Invisible or Deep Web: What it is, How to find it, and Its inherent ambiguity," I learned several useful tips. First, I had never thought to combine a search term with the word "database." When I searched "earthquakes database," I discovered useful sites that allowed me to find information on recent and historical earthquakes. While I did locate two of the same sites when I typed only the term "earthquakes," I also retrieved irrelevant hits such as sites about sports teams, and I noticed that Wikipedia was the first hit. Students doing research could narrow their focus by adding the term "database."

The Berkeley tutorial also recommended two useful directories that contain some invisible web pages: ipl2 and Infomine. Although the pages I visited were also available through the search engine Google, I would recommend these directories to students and to teachers because the web pages have been selected by "students and volunteer library and information science professionals" ("About ipl2"). Of course, the information should still be viewed critically, as stated on the ipl2 site, but it is more likely to be reliable and relevant, and middle- or high-school students will have fewer hits to wade through than if they simply "Google" a topic.

I also was interested to discover that the Google Directory mentioned in the Berkeley tutorial no longer exists. At http://www.google.com/dirhp, the following message appears: "We believe that Web Search is the fastest way to find the information you need on the web." It may be the fastest way to obtain information via the Internet, but is it the fastest way to obtain relevant, reliable information? Google does point to the Open Directory Project at dmoz.org for browsers who prefer to use directories. This directory claims to be "the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web" and "the only major directory that is 100% free." Dmoz criticizes directories with paid editors as being unable to keep up with the "explosive growth of the Internet" and asserts that "the Open Directory provides the means for the Internet to organize itself. As the Internet grows, so do the number of net-citizens. These citizens can each organize a small portion of the web and present it back to the rest of the population, culling out the bad and useless and keeping only the best content." The one quick search I conducted revealed well organized content and brief, useful annotations. I would like to investigate this resource further and compare it to directories such as ipl2 and Infomine.

Works Cited

"About ipl2." ipl2: Information You Can Trust. Drexel University, 2009. Web. 20 Jul, 2011. .

dmoz Open Directory Project. Netscape, 2011.
Web. 20 Jul. 2011. .

"Invisible or Deep Web: What it is, How to find it, and Its inherent ambiguity."
Finding Information on the Internet: A Tutorial Regents of the University of California, 2010. Web. 20 Jul. 2011.
.