ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries 1 0 2 /C & RL News Internet Reviews Sa ra Ama to, editor Ed. note: I’m often asked about other places that re­ view In te rn e t reso u rces. T his c o lu m n , by K urt Wagner, is devoted to that topic. Internet resource e valu ­ ation: A discussion of review sites. Access: h ttp ://w w w . m ckinley. com/. Access: http://www. pointcom .com . Access: h t t p : / / g n n - e 2 a . g n n . com /gnn/w r/index, html. By now, many more librarians and researchers have access to the Internet than did even a year ago. Campuses, offices, colleges, and universi­ ties are becoming increasingly connected, and the Internet has seen explosive growth. Lycos, a popular Internet searching tool, claims to catalog 10 million URLs and index 91% of the Internet. Search engines such as Lycos are in­ valuable and essential to doing research on the Net, as essential as the catalog is to the library. However, the results of key-word searching re­ turned with such engines can, themselves, be a problem. Lycos can retrieve many hundreds of Inter­ net sites per search, and descriptions of these sites are uneven. Third party review of Internet resources marks the transformation of the In­ ternet from being a completely ad hoc network to a source for useful reference and research. What follows is a discussion of three Inter­ net resources which, in turn, provide evalua­ tion of Internet resources. As the numbers of Internet sites continue to increase by hundreds of thousands per year, such evaluative tools will become increasingly important for the con­ duct of useful and effective information gath­ ering from this medium. M agellan—M cKinley’s Internet Direc­ tory. Access: http://www.mckinley.com/. The McKinley Group is a team brought together in 1993 to create Internet navigation and evalu­ ation tools. Its directory of 1.5 million sites in­ cludes 40,000 that are fully reviewed and rated on a four-star system. Magellan/McKinley func­ Sara Amato is automated systems librarian at Central Washington University; samato@tahoma.cwu.edu tions as a kind of “Michelin Guide” to the Internet in that if a site appears at all, it is at le a s t g iv en m inim al a p ­ proval. Using Magellan is simple, and it’s designed to offer the Internet novice as well as the accom plished user an o p ­ portunity to sort through ma­ terial for a “faster, easier, and a more enjoyable experi­ ence.” From the homepage one can simply enter a key word to begin the process. At this point, one can control the number of results returned per search, request that sites below a certain rating not be returned, or re­ quest short, medium, or long descriptions. Sites that contain no adult content are given a “green light” icon, and one can request that only “green light” sites be returned. After a search has been entered, the results appear as an annotated list of sites. At this point, more searching terms can be entered and the search redone. Each result contains a link to the site itself, a link to the review, and a sum­ mary of the site’s contents. Magellan/McKinley reviewers evaluate each site on criteria that in­ clude: completeness of coverage, organization, up-to-dateness, and ease of access. Points are awarded to sites for depth and accuracy, ease of exploration, and “Net appeal.” The latter cri­ terion measures a site’s use of the Internet me­ dium to appeal to the user; is the site thought- provoking? Is it insightful? Is it funny or cool? Each review provides the site’s key words, au­ dience, a description, language, producer, producer’s address (physical), phone number, e-mail contact, cost, and whether or not it is a commercial site. Magellan/McKinley’s reviews use little evalu­ ative language. There is no discussion of a site’s drawbacks or weaknesses. The rating system implies that only sites receiving favorable re­ view are included. In this sense, all of the sites that appear are at least “good.” Point. Access: http://www.pointcom.com. Sites reviewed by Point are authorized to dis­ play a “Best 5% of the Web” emblem on their homepage. This has becom e a sought-after badge of distinction among Web site manag­ http://www http://www http://gnn-e2a.gnn http://www.mckinley.com/ http://www.pointcom.com mailto:samato@tahoma.cwu.edu F eb ru a ry 1 9 9 6 / 1 0 3 ers. Point is ow ned by Lycos, the big Internet search resource, but maintains a separate o p ­ eration. This association is useful, though, as both resources have hyperlinks to one another and can be used as one tool. Point serves as a filter of the Internet, reviewing w hat it consid­ ers the best five percent of sites. The Point staff continually monitor and search the Internet for sites to review, and also accept the nomination of sites by individuals. Reviews are categorized by broad subject. O ne follows the hyperlinks to a second, subject-focused page then selects reviews on the desired topic. The reviews av­ erage about 175 w ords and are generally posi­ tive. Inclusion alone is a positive review. Point evaluates sites based on their content, presentation, and experience. A score from one to fifty is aw arded in each category. Content assesses the thoroughness of the site and its up-to-dateness; presentation assesses its beauty and ease o f use; and experience rates its over­ all “w orthiness.” The approach at Point is more fun than scholarly, as seen in a kind of fresh half-seriousness that is enjoyable. Point pages are designed to allow searchers to sort results based on scores of any of the three categories or by num ber o f visits to the review. Besides reviews, Point also offers an online, evaluative W eb news page called Point Now, w hich is linked to on Point’s homepage. Point Now is a continually updated “Wall Street Journal” o f the Internet and Web. Be­ cause it is designed with the “front p ag e” look o f a new spaper, the user immediately sees cur­ rent news headlines hyperlinked to the associ­ ated story, a condensed “Top Pick” site review, and links to business, w eather, sports, people, a special section, new sites, and new reviews. As a way of bringing together Internet and other news, Point Now has no equal. It is a useful and time-saving resource for keeping informed on this rapidly growing medium. G N N (G lo b a l N e tw o r k N a v ig a to r ) V o ice s—W e b R e v ie w . Access: h ttp :// gnn-e2a. g n n . co m /g n n / w r/ index, html. GNN provides another comprehensive look at w hat is new and best on the World Wide Web, the Internet’s graphic interface. GNN is p ro­ duced by O ’Reilly and Associates, w ho spe­ cialize in online and conventional publishing o f computer, Internet, and technology-related topics. GNN Voices and Web Review take the form o f online magazines, liberally borrowing the print magazine interplay of color, design, and style. These pages have a definite “po p culture” feel. G N N Archive. Access: http://gnn-e2a.gnn.com / g n n / w r/ rev-index/alpha. htm l. This site archives the GNN reviews. Review criteria include a one- to five-star rating, one star being equivalent to “d o n ’t bother looking,” five stars being “just about perfect, one o f the best sites o n the W eb.” GNN makes use of two unique measures in its reviews: the “Quality Time” rating w hich asks, “If you had only an hour, how m uch time w ould you sp en d at this site?”; and the “Dreck-o-meter,” w hich indicates the am ount of information deem ed worthless by the GNN staff. These important, if subjec­ tive, ratings report on tw o aspects of Internet sites that greatly affect their usefulness and re­ liability as reference or research tools. The reviews h ere are not categorized or searchable. The list of sites is not extensive, 200 or so, and can be brow sed in alphabetical order by site name. Although most “major” sites get attention, GNN site reviews lack the organization and scope of those at McKinley or Point, but the very good review criteria they use can help us to becom e more effective at evaluating sites for ourselves. Conclusion A simple brow se through Internet indices o r a search using engines like Lycos or Webcrawler is not enough to use the medium effectively. The millions o f Internet sites added annually and the variegated array of good, bad, and in­ different sites make the developm ent of evalu­ ative tools a necessity. A few minutes spent at one of these review resources can save hours of valuable time of virtual wandering about on the Internet.— K urt W. Wagner, William Pater­ so n College o f N ew Jersey; ku rt@ fren tier. wilpaterson.edu ■ http://gnn-e2a.gnn.com 1 0 4 /C & R L News