A+ Research & Writing

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Links for Research—Web Directories

Use the tools on this page when you're doing a broad search to get an overview of a subject and when you want to find out what kind of internet resources are available in a particular topic area. Search engines, though some also contain subject directories, are not listed here.

For search engines, see the Search Engines page.
For descriptions and evaluations of the features of various directories and engines, see Evaluation of Web Directories and Search Engines

Note: the links below take you further down on this page.

Major Web directories
Other collections of subject-classified links

Major Web directories

About: http://www.about.com/; Human guides find and organize web resources on more than 50,000 topics.
Bulletin Board for Library Systems (BUBL): http://bubl.ac.uk/; A subject-based internet resource intended for the academic and research community. There is an alphabetical subject tree and one classified by UDC (Universal Decimal Classification, the British alternative to Dewey Decimal).; FAQ - http://bubl.ac.uk/admin/faq.htm
The Internet Public Library Subject Collections: http://www.ipl.org/div/subject/; Long list of subject-classified links, annotated by librarians. Some of the classifications are: Education, Arts & Humanities, Science & Technology, Computers & Internet, Business, Law & Government.
Open Directory: http://www.dmoz.org/; Created and maintained by volunteers, Open Directory is "the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web." There is a special category with information for Teens.; Help - http://dmoz.org/help/helpmain.html
Yahoo!: http://www.yahoo.com/; Huge database of subject-classified sites with helpful annotations written by staff.; Search help - http://search.yahoo.com/search/help?; Info - links to Help—FAQ—Features - http://www.yahoo.com/docs/info/

Other collections of subject-classified links

Best Information on the Net: http://library.sau.edu/bestinfo/; Selected internet sites, classified by college major and hot paper topics. Maintained by O'Keefe Library at St. Ambrose University.
INFOMINE: Scholarly Internet Resource Collections — (U California, Riverside): http://infomine.ucr.edu/; 23,000+ subject classified links to internet sites with valuable information for students and scholars.
Librarians' Index to the Internet: http://www.lii.org/; A directory of more than 10,000 websites selected by librarians with public library users in mind.; Help - http://www.lii.org/search/file/help
Multidisciplinary WWW Subject Directories for Scholars—(Houston CC): http://info.lib.uh.edu/wsub.htm; This page links to about two dozen libraries and organizations which have posted collections of subject-classified links suitable for scholarly research.
My Virtual Reference Desk - Table of Contents: by Bob Drudge; http://www.refdesk.com/toc.html; Long list of links on popular and current events topics as well as more scholarly sites. Features My Virtual Newspaper, My Virtual Facts on File and My Virtual Encyclopedia, all filled with subject-classified links.
Scout Toolkit - InterNIC Net Scout: http://wwwscout.cs.wisc.edu/scout/toolkit/index.html; Selected subject-classified bookmarks and links to web authoring tools, search engines and Web directories.

a green book linking to table of contents

a library image linking to a research guide

A+ Research & Writing for high school and college students was created by Kathryn L. Schwartz