Specialized Directories and Guides

W3C Servers
The Virtual Tourist
W3C Resources by Type of Service
URL-minder
Deja News
Liszt
Four11
Switchboard
Jumbo Shareware
shareware.com
The Un-Official Internet Book List
USPS Lookup
AT&T 800 Directory
Timezone Converter
Calculators Online
A Web of Online Dictionaries
Accessing The Internet By E-Mail, by "Dr." Bob Rankin

See Yahoo for more directory sites...


W3C List of Servers Around the World
http://celtic.stanford.edu/vlib/Servers.html

Provider: World Wide Web Consortium
Browsable index: Yes
Search capabilities: No
Item submission method: Human
Selection of Resources/Who Selects? No
Annotated: Submitter determines
Intended Audience: General
FAQ: No
The World Wide Web Consortium provides comprehensive Web resource listings organized in several ways. Their Virtual Library, included in the "Subject Guide" section of the Scout Toolkit, organizes resources by topic. In this section we include two other W3C catalogs, organized geographically and by network tool. The W3C List of Servers Around the World is a catalog of Web servers listed alphabetically, beginning with continent. Within each continent there is a country listing. For the United States, there is also a state listing. Some of the geographic areas have graphical maps to click on for sites.
[Return to Top]

The Virtual Tourist
http://www.vtourist.com/webmap/

Provider: Kinesava Geographics
Browsable index: Yes
Search capabilities: No
Item submission method: Human
Selection of Resources/Who Selects? No
Annotated: Yes, by the submitter
Intended Audience: General
FAQ: Yes, for the product.
The Virtual Tourist is a graphical representation of Web resources organized geographically. It is based largely on the W3C List of Servers Around the World. Clickable maps are used to locate sites in specific countries. The Virtual Tourist offers a rich and graphically beautiful interface, but it may not prove useful for those with slow SLIP connections.
[Return to Top]

W3C Resources Classified by Type of Service
http://vlib.stanford.edu/ByAccess.html

Provider: World Wide Web Consortium
Browsable index: Yes
Search capabilities: No
Item submission method: Human
Selection of Resources/Who Selects? No
Intended Audience: General
Annotated: Some parts are
FAQ: No
Maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium, this catalog is arranged by "type of service" or "network tool" such as Web, Gopher, FTP, and Telnet, among others. It also provides a complete list of Usenet News groups.
[Return to Top]

The URL-minder: Your Own Personal Web Robot
http://www.netmind.com/URL-minder/URL-minder.html

Provider: Netmind
Browsable index: No
Search capabilities: No
Item submission method: Human
Selection of Resources/Who Selects? No
Intended Audience: General
FAQ: Yes, for the product.
This site performs the unique service of tracking URLs of interest and alerting you via email when changes are detected in those URLs. It covers resources available via the web, FTP, or gopher. Updates are sent out at frequent intervals.
[Return to Top]

Deja News
http://www.dejanews.com/

Provider: Deja News, Inc.
Browsable Index: No
Search Capabilities: Yes
Item Submission method: Robot
Editorial Function: No
Intended Audience: General
FAQ: Yes, for the product. Yes, for the searching system..
Deja News offers a huge, searchable collection of individual postings to Usenet News. Usenet postings for most news groups are available from early 1995 on. The content of this large collection of postings can be searched by newsgroup, author, subject, or posting date. Boolean AND/OR/NOT searching is supported (check the help file for the and/or/not symbols to use) as well as truncation, proximity, and phrase searching. The results produced from a Deja News search can be sorted by relevance, group, date, or author. Usenet messages can be posted from a form on the Deja News site. This service offers a powerful interface to searching the mountains of information available in Usenet news.
[Return to Top]

The Liszt Directory of E-mail Discussion Groups
http://www.liszt.com/

Provider: Scott Southwick
Browsable index: Yes, for a select group of lists
Search capabilities: Yes
Item submission method: Robot and Human
Editorial function: Yes, private lists and lists without descriptions are excluded.
Annotated: Yes, by the provider of the e-mail list.
Intended Audience: General
FAQ: Yes, for the product. Yes,, for the searching system.
Liszt one of the largest directories of email discussion groups. It features fast, searchable access to information on more than 60,000 listserv, majordomo, listproc, and independently-managed mailing lists. Liszt updates itself with direct queries to hundreds of servers. A form is also provided for list-owners who wish to add their own lists to the database. Liszt also offers a browsable selection of mailing list information (Liszt Select).15 subject categories are available.
[Return to Top]

Four11: The Internet White Pages
http://www.four11.com

Provider: Four11 Corp.
Browsable index: No
Search capabilities: Yes
Item submission method: Robot and Human
Editorial Function: No
Intended Audience: General
FAQ: Yes, for the product. Yes, for the search engine, on the home page under Help/FAQ."
Four11 is one of the largest email directory services in existence, offering several million email listings in its database. Listings are culled from Usenet news postings, auto-registration via Internet Service Providers, and individual user submissions. Note that Four11 will delete a user's entry on request of that user, and the service displays only a limited number of items so that compiling large mailing lists for personal use is not possible. The database can be searched by first name, last name, domain, and geographic area. One option is the use of "smart names," i.e. Bob = Robert. The results of each search are provided in a Web email form so the user can immediately send mail to the person found. A phone number lookup is offered as well, for direct queries, or linked to email query retrieval, so that the phone number of the person for whom an email address was just found can also be found.
[Return to Top]

Switchboard
http://www.switchboard.com

Provider: Switchboard Inc.
Browsable index: No
Search capabilities: Yes
Item submission method: Published white pages directories, user submissions
Editorial function: No
Intended Audience: General
FAQ: Yes, for the the product. Yes, for the searching system.
Switchboard offers a searchable database of the names, addresses, and phone numbers of over 100 million residential and 10 million businesses across the United States. Entries are compiled from publically available white pages phone listings such as those found on CD-ROM products used in libraries. Entries can be deleted by registering with Switchboard and removing the entry yourself, by sending them email, or by writing a "snail mail" letter. Users can search the database by name, city, and state. The business database can be searched by business name, type, city, and state. Results are returned in groupings of eight on a page. The total number of retrieved items is not provided on the first page. A listing consists of a name, address and phone number, and can contain an email address.
[Return to Top]

Jumbo Shareware
http://www.jumbo.com/

Provider: Jumbo, Inc.
Browsable index: Yes
Search capabilities: Yes
Item submission method: Human
Editorial Function: Unknown
Annotated: Yes
Intended Audience: General
FAQ: No
This searchable archive contains over 90,000 shareware and freeware programs in 24 subject categories. Categories include business, education, multimedia, and science, among others. Within each category, programs are cataloged by operating system. The entire archive is searchable by program category and operating system. The size of each program is provided.
[Return to Top]

shareware.com
http://www.shareware.com/

Provider: c|net Inc.
Browsable index: Yes
Search capabilities: Yes
Item submission method: Robot
Editorial Function: Unknown
Annotated: Yes, by c|net editors
Intended Audience: General
FAQ: Yes, for the product. Yes, for the searching system.
shareware.com indexes over 190,000 software files located in archives around the Internet, including freeware, shareware, demos, patches, fixes, and upgrades. Users can search by platform, archive, or software name. Browsing by platform, archive, or keyword is also available. Approximate download times are given and download reliability is also noted. The site offers an e-mail newsletter to keep current on new additions.
[Return to Top]

The Un-official Internet Book List
http://www.savetz.com/booklist/

Provider: Savetz Publishing
Browsable index: Yes
Search capabilities: Not available at this time
Selection of Resources/Who Selects? Yes/Kevin Savetz
Annotated: Yes
Intended Audience: General, computer professionals
FAQ: No, for the searching system, at this time.
The Un-official Internet Book List, a service of Kevin Savetz Publishing, includes over 700 books about the Internet, including its users, software, hardware, use, and abuse. The List is browsable through a multi-level hierarchy which the user can choose to sort by title, author, or publisher. Top level categories include Internet introductions and guides, Site indices and guides, Intermediate/advanced books, and Servers and system administration. The user can also search the List by keyword to search all book descriptions. Submissions to The Un-official Internet Book List are welcome, as are user's comments about the books. Each book annotation contains author, publisher, price, and ISBN (International Standard Book Number) information. Most annotations also contain short, descriptive abstracts.
[Return to Top]

United States Postal Service
City/State/ZIP Code Lookup

http://www.usps.gov/ncsc/

[Return to Top]

AT&T 800 Directory
http://www.tollfree.att.net/dir800/

[Return to Top]

Time Zone Converter
http://poisson.ecse.rpi.edu/cgi-bin/tzconvert

[Return to Top]

Calculators Online
http://www-sci.lib.uci.edu/HSG/RefCalculators.html

[Return to Top]

Online Dictionaries
http://www.bucknell.edu/~rbeard/diction.html

[Return to Top]

Accessing The Internet By E-Mail, by "Dr." Bob Rankin
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/internet-services/access-via-email

[Return to Top]

Yahoo: Computers and Internet; Internet; World Wide Web; Searching the Web.
http://www.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/World_Wide_Web/Searching_the_Web/

Provider: Yahoo
Browsable index: Yes
Search capabilities: Yes
Item submission method: Robot and human
Editorial function: Depends on the searching system used
Annotated: Depends on the searching system used
FAQ: Depends on the searching system used
This Yahoo page connects to over 100 searching services.
[Return to Top]


[Return to Searching the Internet]
[Return to Scout Toolkit]

[Searchable Indexes] [Subject Catalogs] [Annotated Directories] [Subject Guides]