The possibility of indexing the World Wide Web is a very popular topic in librarianship today. The web is an enormous information resource; however, it is also a completely amorphous one lacking in any conventional form of organization. So far, users who rely on the web as an information resource mainly depend on search engines. Search engine keyword searches that are facilitated by "web crawlers" typically yield thousands of results that the user then must sift through in order to find any relevant documents." ...it is difficult to ensure that the web crawlers are getting good coverage. It is also difficult to be sure that the way crawlers categorise resources in their index is accurate and fair. This is particularly the case for multilingual resources, multi-media resources, images, audio resources, and resources accessible via database gateways. For many users, the current quality of service offered by search engines has been adequate, but for users and information provider requiring rigour and reliability in their resource discovery process, the degree of uncertainty is not acceptable. The rate of growth in the amount of accessible information is only serving to increase this uncertainty" (Wood).

The web has also become cluttered with advertisements, which also make the location of relevant materials difficult and time consuming. As a result, librarians have developed several ways to facilitate access to web documents.

I will discuss two predominant ways in which librarians are dealing with information on the web. The first is the creation of library webliographies that will be of use to local users. The second is the massive undertaking of introducing metadata into the structure of web documents, so that web sites are in effect indexed when they are created through the use of standardized practices.
 

• Local Library Practice
• Metadata
• Introduction
• The Dublin Core Element Set
• RDF
• Controlled Vocabulary Use with Metadata
• The Future of Metadata
• Bibliography