World Wide Arts Resources (WWAR) advertises itself as “The Largest Gateway to the Arts”, which seems unarguable. In their opening paragraph, they say that they offer the “biggest gateway to the arts on the Internet ‐ from happening, groovin’ art events to traditional planar exhibitions and museums to way out 3‐D cyber galleries.” This description immediately tells you that it is geared toward a general audience but usable by all, including academics looking for work on obscure and significant artists. WWAR makes repeated claims of superiority in their indexing because they concentrate solely on the arts and are able to link to just about every art site possible. The actual web page itself is basic in appearance, though. One would think that a page on the arts would be more attractive with graphics. This is not the case, however. As such, then, it is more practical. Overall, the web site was relatively quick in its searching capabilities. Graphics of any kind would have slowed down the page. Furthermore, considering that WWAR is merely an index, graphics are not necessary. The links themselves give you the pretty pictures. The pages themselves are divided into sections. The main page is a basic white page with text and an occasional banner advertising museums, art galleries, and the like. The left side of the page is a smaller yellow column which provides a list of secondary search options.
Like the source itself, the search engine is rather simple and does not allow for advanced searches. It claims to be able to search through 150,000 arts pages. It is one of the slower items on WWAR; but one would imagine worth the extra few seconds. Aside from the search engine, users can choose the directory itself (located in the yellow column), providing links to a multitude of indexed pages of URLs on the arts. For instance, there are links to art museums, art schools, today’s art news, and chat rooms. There is a total 26 links here (they claim to have 460 categories; but they do not clarify where the other 434 categories are). On each page, one has a choice of different navigator links to assist in moving through the pages.
There are also links to sources on Film, Theater, Dance, Festivals, Antiques, Crafts, and so on. Of the wide variety of 26 links, I looked at some of the following:
The “Most Popular” link takes you to an index of some of the most popular art sites at WWAR. These are based on the opinions of viewers; and they are updated each week. Some of the top sites included the Leonardo da Vinci Museum (http://cellini.leonardo.net/museum/main.html), Shelly Feinerman Paintings (http://www.motley‐focus.com/∼timber/shellypaint.html). The yellow column had a list of links to museums in countries around the world. The link to Portugal Museums provided a list of 10 art‐themed museum links, half of which were described.
The “Chat Forum” and the “Message Forum” take you to new pages called Absolutely Arts, supported by WWAR. They offer an online chat room enabling you to talk to art aficionados throughout the world or bulletin board services to check for messages posted by other individuals.
The “Artist Index” allows searching by letter (column) or by major art movement (main page). Selecting “Renaissance,” I got an alphabetical list of web site links to Renaissance artists from Altodorfer to Zuccaro, with every major artist listed, including six links to Michelangelo. The alphabetical list provides a series of links on artists whose last name/title begins with that letter. (I was pleasantly surprised to see there were three links to Dante Gabriel Rossetti, as well as links to other Pre‐Raphaelite artists.)
One of the newest features of WWAR is a City Arts Locator with over 243 American and international cities listed. I was glad to find Tampa on the list, providing links to a few art galleries, the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg (http://www.webcoast.com/Dali/dali.htm), the University of South Florida’s College of Fine Arts (http://www.arts.usf.edu), as well as USF’s Graphicstudio (http://www.arts.usf.edu/gs/), a highly under‐rated venue for graphic artists such as Lichtenstein and others whose works have been produced and displayed there.
WWAR offers patrons the opportunity to partake in other features. You can register a site with WWAR using their online registration form, with the understanding that you refer people on your site back to theirs. This service is free. Their advertising rates seem relatively reasonable, offering banners in a variety of formats and pages for approximately $30 a month with discounts for monthly extensions. They also offer fee‐based web site building services. They encourage users to fill out and submit their online opinion survey as well.
Perhaps the only serious problem I had with this web site was that it did not always fit onto my screen. The main page on the right carries off the screen (on my Netscape viewer 3.0) so that I could not always read the ends of words in some lines. I can hardly criticize it for anything else. As a search engine/directory of arts resources, I found the site valuable. Anyone could benefit from its use. It seems relatively well‐maintained. I hit no dead‐ends. I think it is better than Yahoo!, AltaVista, or other services in terms of accessing arts resources, although one must remember that WWAR only indexes those sites that individuals have submitted to it or that they have sought out; therefore, it cannot be complete. I consider the site to be valuable to any library, including an academic library, for its researching capabilities. The information on artists, art movements, galleries, as well as other art forms, is advantageous for all. I highly recommend this site and have kept it among my reference bookmarks for future use.
