Environmental Sites on the Internet made its debut in November 1995, offering a gateway to links on environmental topics. It functions as a free environmental directory available to anyone with Internet access and requires no registration. Links include conferences, other directory and guide sites, general environmental sites, journals, initiatives, cross‐disciplinary projects, and organizations covering a wide range of environmental issues. There is no original content, and no indication of criteria used for selection of sites included or for the assignment of subject terms. The author works in the Industrial Ecology section of the host institute, but no other credentials are given on the page, although a Metacrawler search result describes him as a scholar.
The site received awards in 1995, 1996 and 1998 from other environmental organizations for its comprehensive approach and relevance. However, two years is a long time on the Internet, and five years is an eternity. One of the awarding bodies, Eco Network, no longer has a URL as of this writing, and the site has a number of problems that make use cumbersome and frustrating.
The color layout of the page uses green, white and blue. The green background in the index frame can be tiresome, but the overall effect is pleasant enough. The font size is browser‐controlled, so can be set to user preference. The site operates using two side‐by‐side frames: the left frame is a contents list, the right frame opening screen lists the title of the site, the author’s name and address, last revision date, a quick‐loading image of earth as seen from space, and awards the site has received with links to the awarding organizations.
The Contents frame has several links near the top: Front page (“home”), Sweden and the Environment, and The Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden (the site’s host institution) and their research projects. Further down are two lists of links: General and Subject index. The General links include Conferences, Directories, General Environmental Sites, Guides, Internet Tools and Engines, Journals and Newsletters, and Right Livelihood Award. The Subject index included 195 categories as of this writing, each of which connects to lists of links specific to those areas (hereafter referred to as subject category lists).
The Contents frame anchors the site and is useful for users who get lost deep in a site, but the frames operation can be confusing. The frames’ html code directs external links to open results in a new browser window. Moving more than two levels deep into the site may open additional browser windows. After the second browser session opens to display results the first time, subsequent links will simply appear in that second session, so the user must remember to maximize that window to view the result. Other sites do better in keeping their index bar with each visited page. In addition, colors of visited links do not always change, making it difficult to be sure which links have been explored.
Users can search any of the terms in the subject index as a keyword using the search feature (“searchable index”) to display another list of those subject category lists where that keyword was found. For example, doing a keyword search on “acid rain” rather than linking to the Acid rain subject category list will return the following:
- 1.
1Acid Rain [19‐Apr‐99, 2KB].
- 2.
2Contents [13‐Dec‐99, 7KB]
- 3.
3Acid Rain [09‐Mar‐98, 596 Bytes]
- 4.
4Acid Rain [02‐Oct‐98, 345 Bytes]
Item 1 links to the same list that would result from clicking on the Acid rain subject category. Item 2 duplicates the opening screen left frame contents so it displays also in the right‐hand frame. Item 3 links to the Solvent alternatives subject category list, and Item 4 links to a different “Acid rain” page with a single link. The user is left to browse through each subject category containing the search term, which may mean moving back and forth between dozens of links. This failure to focus on the actual search term location is a real limitation of the site.
The searchable index does not offer specific help information, but defaults to the Boolean “and” when two or more keywords are entered. However, one can retrieve different results by entering the Boolean operators surrounded by quotes.
A number of links are in Swedish, and Okomedia Online, which selected this site as one of the 200 most important sites of ecological relevance on the Web, is only available in German. Other links have the option to choose an English version.
Currency of the site is misleading. Although the opening screen clearly showed it was updated during the week of review, some lower‐level pages display dates as old as 1998, while other links are broken or have moved. For example, of the first ten links listed in the Renewable energy section of the Subject index, two are broken, one leads to an Infoseek general query page with no results, another has moved to a new URL, and yet another leads to the home page of the named site since the indicated html file does not exist. In the Africa section, two of the first seven links generate server “not found” errors, and another again leads to the home page of the organization where the subdirectory and named html file did not exist. The Statistics section, an important area in any discipline to many researchers, has two broken links out of nine listed.
Despite these navigation and maintenance problems, perusing the links turns up fascinating pieces of information and reveals the existence of organizations that may be unknown. For example, there is an American Indian Environmental Office, part of the Environmental Protection Agency, with active programs for protecting water on tribal lands. Young Canadians have a site in which to speak out on climate change called the Climate Change Youth Café. There is a Women’s Environmental Network forum in the UK to specifically represent women’s viewpoints in this area. Those interested in organic farming and gardening can choose from 21 different links to farming and composting information.
The usefulness of the site is greatly reduced by its limited search feature, broken links, inaccurate and incomplete search results, and irregular maintenance. However, the links that do work give the dedicated searcher access to a wide range of topics on ecology and the environment. If nothing else, the site can direct users to other directory and guide sites which are more functional as well as helpful in the discovery of fascinating projects and initiatives in the field of environmental research. For example, A Guide to Environmental Resources on the Internet (http://www‐personal.si.umich.edu/ ∼cbriggs/ environ_murphybriggs2.html) is well documented and logically organized.
The site is recommended with reservations to students and researchers in the environmental field.
