Finding a Specific Subject Directory

If you explore the general subject directories previously discussed, you will inevitably come across single-subject directories.  You can also use a search engine to find them (which is a pretty good use of a search engine).  Here's how.  Choose your favorite search engine, say, Google, and enter your subject plus one of the following terms:

• directory
• index
• database
• portal
• gateway

For example you could enter a broad topic like "ethics" and "portal," or a more specific subject, such as "cloning" and "directory."  Different combinations work for different subjects.  You just have to try them out.  Would you like to test one?  Try "cloning" and "directory."  (Hint: If you get biased or amateurish results, don't forget that you can narrow to college and academic sites by adding site:.edu to your search.)

We'll wait here while you try it in Google. 

...Welcome back.  Did you happen to notice among your search results any links to Yahoo!?  For example, this one: Genetics > Human Cloning in the Yahoo! Directory.  Did you know that Yahoo! was a subject directory before it was a search engine?  It still has a significant subject directory, but it has played that down considerably.  Just look down the Yahoo! home page and you will see this:

As our green arrow indicates, there is more to it than this.  Clicking on the "more" link will get you a much more extensive directory.  In fact if you have ever used Yahoo! your have probably gotten into its directory, because when you search Yahoo! you are searching both its computer-generated database of links and its human-created subject directory of links.

Here's another piece of search-engine-subject-directory convergence: Google also has an ever-expanding, human-created subject directory.  We'll bet that you can find that for yourself the next time you use Google.  (Hint: Look on the Google search screen for the link to more ».)

Next we'll look at something invisible.