On 24th Sept Chris Rusbridge wrote:
>> The Yahoo! subject collection now has a UK version. I haven't had chance to
>> explore it yet.
>>
>> " Yahoo! UK and Ireland Designed to deliver the richness of the Yahoo! database
>> from a uniquely British & Irish perspective."
>>
>>
>> http://www.yahoo.co.uk
>
>First glance: looks interesting, but have they sized it right? Veerrrry
>slow!
>
>Do we now have some serious competition for the eLib ANR projects? I
>notice that SOSIG is one of the social sciences resources pointed to. I
>wonder what sort of effect this launch has on possible exit strategies for
>these services? (Could make them easier or harder at first thought!)
>
AT PRESENT, Yahoo! UK & Ireland does not pose a threat to EEVL,
(which is also mentioned in their index, albeit at an old ULR (which
nevertheless works), because:
1. As Chris poinrs out, Yahoo is very slow
2. Yahoo is very incomplete
3. Its inteface is not as user friendly as EEVL's
4. It does nothave many of the features of EEVL
5. It has only 1 line descriptions rather than useful and carefully
written abstracts
6. Its classification scheme is bizarre
HOWEVER Yahoo! is adding URLs at a rate of over 1500 a week, is very
popular amongst searchers, has a well-known name (it was mentioned in
the Daily Telegraph, which is more than EEVL has so far managed), and
even has a printed magazine (Yahoo! Internet Life - for details and a
not very complementary review, see the forthcoming issue of Internet
Resources Newsletter). In the future, therefore, IMHO it (or other
services, or yet to be developed fancy search engines) may well pose
a threat to SBIGs, especially if those SBIGs concentrate only on
producing directories/databases of web sites, despite the undoubdtedly higher
quality of those databases.
This is one reason why EEVL is currently developing beyond its main
service of a searchable database of Engineering Internet resources,
and why we hope to introduce various innovative new services in the
not too distant future. EEVL hopes to become a real Gateway to UK
Engineering networked information - a meeting place for academics and
their industrial partners (or prospective partners), with customised
services, with in-depth indexing, with an archive of resources, with
various specialised databases, etc etc etc. Hopefully these will
prove to be popular and useful, and hopefully they may assist EEVL to
develop a viable exit strategy.
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Roddy MacLeod Internet: [log in to unmask]
Senior Faculty Librarian Phone: (0131) 451 3576
Heriot-Watt University Fax: (0131) 451 3164
Edinburgh EH14 4AS
United Kingdom URL: http://www.hw.ac.uk/libWWW/libram/roddy.html
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