Vertically challenged

Citation

(2001), "Vertically challenged", Work Study, Vol. 50 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ws.2001.07950bab.009

Vertically challenged

Vertically challenged

With more than 50,000 entries, the metaguide alba36.com offers access to an interesting set of Web resources which it dubs "vortals" – vertical portals. Vortals are Web sites including content, information and links specific to a subject/area. As a metaguide, alba36.com offers a new approach for research on the Internet. Best results are reached by a search moving from the general on to the specific. This is in contrast to search engines which require precise search terms in order to find relevant information. Alba36.com-users search for subjects such as "biology" or "cars", receive relevant vortal sites and find the topic-specific information and links there. Alba36.com organises the links to the vortals into 36 categories and more than 700 sub-categories. A full-text search helps to find the appropriate categories. The editorial staff of alba36.com actively searches for the vortals, evaluates and describes them. This work assures that the metaguide gives only relevant results. The user interface will switch to German, French, Spanish or Italian via mouse click and the vortal sites are listed accordingly. See http://www.alba36.com