How subject directories work and why they are useful

How does a subject directory work?

Most subject directories are organized in similar ways. Subject directories effectively use hypertext links, enabling you to work your way from broad categories to specific topics. By hypertext-linking the pages, these directories can be very topic-focused. Most subject directories provide summary descriptions for every link, allowing you to get an idea of what is on a listed page without having to actually open it.

If you want to know more about Caribbean vacations, searching for the phrase "Caribbean vacation" may not be the best way to go. Instead of keyword searching, which will get you some links to hotel websites and other commercial sites, you are better off browsing through the Open Directory's categories to find specific references and results, such as first person accounts of traveling in this area, reviews of hotels and restaurants, or suggestions of things to do in the area. In this case, you would click through the following categories:

Recreation > Travel > Regional > Caribbean

This takes you to a series of on-target Caribbean vacation online resources and information. Most subject directories allow you to keyword search them, but then you are not searching the full-text of the documents contained on the specific pages the link is pointing to. So you could miss important documents altogether by using the search function in a directory. Most subject directory databases tend to be much smaller than search engines' databases.

To make up for that, most directories supplement their results with additional results provided by search engine partners. For example, a search on Yahoo! will list additional results from its partner, Inktomi. AOL uses Google for its search results, but AOL uses its own Open Directory as its partner for directory results. When the directory search fails to provide any results, the search engine partner's results are listed as primary results.

Benefits of subject directories

Another benefit of using a subject directory is the way results are listed. When you use a search engine, you get ten or twenty results per page and must keep flipping through pages to view all the results. A subject directory will list all its results on one page with descriptions of all the links and direct links to the sites you want to see. But, there are some downsides to subject directories besides the size limit.

Timeliness can be an issue. With the constant changes of the Internet, some directories get out-of-date quickly because the editor does not regularly monitor all the changes on pages. Bias can also be an issue, depending on the subject. This problem is much more prevalent on directories in politically charged areas like the Middle East, the Balkans, India and Pakistan.

For the most part, directories are either closed models or open ones. Closed model directories, exemplified by the Librarians' Index to the Internet and the Institute are pulled together by professional editors (in these cases, skilled librarians) who select the links and set up the categories. While the quality of these two directories is superb, on other directories the quality does vary. Generally, you can expect high quality results from closed directories.

Open model directories such as the Open Directory Project depend on volunteer editors to compile the category and subject information. The Open Directory Project is the directory for AOL. Search engines like Google use the Open Directory but add an easy search capability for it. Hundreds of other search tools also use directories, and many depend on volunteer editors as well. With open directory models, you will find that the level of quality can vary widely from editor to editor. You will still find some very good volunteer editors. Whether an open directory or closed, a good way to test a subject directory's overall quality is to start with a topic you are familiar with and look at the quality of the resulting links.

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