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1.a. Advantages of Topic-Oriented Directories
There are two major advantages of topic-oriented directories. First of all they rely on a logical organization of information. Unlike encyclopedias and other reference books that organize information in alphabetical order, topic directories are organized by subject and topic. Therefore the information (rather than spelling) becomes the navigator. Another benefit of this information-based organization is that cross-references tend to exist, linking different paths of research together.
The second advantage lies in the final page that that was generated by our search for Monarch Butterflies. That final list of web pages will be a short and concentrated list of resources, concentrated in that they will all be about butterflies and moths. If you have used a search engine before, you know that a search of butterflies will produce a very large list of resources, only some of which are actually about butterflies. For instance a search of HotBot generates a list of 60,059 pages. Within the first ten is a site advertising live butterflies for release at weddings. By contrast, Yahoo produced a list of only 30 sites, each one about butterflies.
Section : Finding Digital Resources
Page 1: Topic-Oriented Directories
a: Advantages of TODs
Page 2: Search Engines
Page 3: Net-Smarts -- or becoming Netwise
Page 4: S.E.A.R.C.H.
