Matrix, Subject Catalogs: EINET Galaxy

Since EINet categories are maintained by those Internet folks who are actually interested in those particular topics. This means that the links are of much better quality, relevance, and popularity.

Key Links

• All Galaxy Search Pages: http://www.einet.net/search.html
• Search Galaxy Pages: http://www.einet.net/search-pages.html
• Find Galaxy Entries: http://www.einet.net/entries/entries.html
• Search the Web (Fulltext): http://www.einet.net/www/www.html
• Search the Web (Link text only): http://www.einet.net/www/links/links.html

• Galaxy Staff: http://lmc.einet.net/staff.html
• Guest Editor: http://www.einet.net/editors.html

Organization

• The Galaxy is primarily a subject-organized catalog.
  • Major and second level topics contain cross-references to relevant areas. The links on subject pages are grouped into sections listing relevant collections, discussion groups, directories, organizations, and much more.
  • There are 11 major subject headings, and intermediate pages contain an average of more than 50 links. The hierarchy is organized into 3 levels of specificity.
• The catalog offers several interfaces for searching catalog information, each page searches a different data set: the text of the Galaxy pages, the documents catalogued by the Galaxy, the fulltext of World Wide Web pages, the text of Web links, Gopherspace, and Hytelnet. A brief summary of these data sets is provided.
  • Searches are performed using a modified FreeWAIS database.
  • Features
    • Supports Multiple Keywords (implicit Boolean OR)
    • Full support for complex Boolean expressions
    • Supports truncated keywords (substrings)
  • Limitations
    • No provisions for a Controlled Vocabulary
    • No Proximity Searching
  • Documents are sorted by the quality of the match, and the result sets are limited to discrete amounts from 40 to 240 hits.
  • The chosen search interface specifies the data that is searched, either fulltext or certain portions of the data.
• The catalog offers an HTML Forms search interface, but most document search pages are not Forms based.
• The server catalogs Internet documents with no restrictions as to content.

Administration

• Documents in the catalog are added by Guest Editors who maintain areas of special interest. This unique administrative technique spreads the work to those who are best equipped and motivated to do the work.
• Both the catalog and the search engine interfaces are quite responsive.
• Quality of Index
  • Documents are added at the rate of 150-200 a week.
  • I could find no dead links, probably because many of the subject areas are closely maintained by interested guest editors.
  • The catalog contains over 350,000 documents.
  • There are a large number of search pages, but little preface material is provided to differentiate between the data sets.
• Additional Services
  • The server's Help Page offers a basic description of the basic search engine, and outlines useful search strategies for finding data.
  • Most pages include a standard "Bookmark Bar" as a navigational aid for returning to key pages in the catalog.
  • The catalog also maintains a What's New? page, as well as a list of the Most Popular pages on the server.
  • Users are encouraged to register documents to be catalogued. In fact, the editors are looking for Guest Editors to maintain subject areas of special interest.
  • Search results include document link, title, match quality, and the file size of the document.