Surfing the deeper layers of the world wide web

If the world wide web were an ocean, we need to have the means to surf the seabed. Most of the time, according to various sources in the internet, we are only able to access the first layer. According to Wendy Boswell of About.com, there are information in databases that are generally inaccessible to software spiders and crawlers that create search engine indexes. Bright Planet says that the invisible web is thousands of times larger than the surface web and the data it keeps are unknown or hidden and cannot be easily found using conventional search engines. Data in the invisible web is content that exists deep within sites which require deep web harvesting techniques.

There is so much to know in the world and we can call ourselves lucky that some people work so hard to get some answers to questions about the “mystery” of the web. Gary Price, a librarian and a webmaster at the Virginia Campus of GeorgeWashingtonUniversity is at the forefront of the effort to gather the tools for people to be able to surf the deeper layers of the world wide web. Along with Gary Price, Marylaine Block, an internet trainer, editor/author of an interesting and important e-zine (ExLibris), and a Webmaster for a couple of popular and useful Web site guides, did a research on internet sites that would be helpful in helping people browse for data in the invisible web. Here are sites that will help us dive better into the deeper layers of information in the internet ocean:

a) The Invisible Web - http://marylaine.com/resume.html

b) http://www.worldcat.org/ - hey have millions of records from more than 405 institutions as diverse as African Journals Online and the Library Network of Western Switzerland.

c) Library Spot - http://websearch.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=websearch&cdn=compute&tm=181&f=20&su=p284.9.336.ip_p504.1.336.ip_&tt=2&bt=1&bts=0&zu=http%3A//www.libraryspot.com/

d) UCLA Library - http://websearch.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=websearch&cdn=compute&tm=491&f=20&su=p284.9.336.ip_p504.1.336.ip_&tt=2&bt=1&bts=0&zu=http%3A//www2.library.ucla.edu/search/eresources.cfm

e) Resource Discovery Network - http://websearch.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=websearch&cdn=compute&tm=5158&f=20&su=p284.9.336.ip_p504.1.336.ip_&tt=2&bt=1&bts=0&zu=http%3A//www.rdn.ac.uk/

f) http://websearch.about.com/od/invisibleweb/a/invisibleweb.htm

It would indeed be very helpful for us, students of life, if we had access to the vast information waiting out there in the web. The tools mentioned in this hub are just a scratch on the surface of our information-filled world