The Web allows you to access most types of information on the Internet through a browser. One of the main features of the Web is the ability to quickly link to other related information. The Web contains information beyond plain text, including sounds, images and video.
Web sites are a good source for:
- current news and information
- information about companies and organizations
- information from all levels of government
- expert and popular opinions
To find websites that contain information on your topic you wil need to use an Internet search engine.
Publishers on the Web
The information you find on the Web is as varied as the people who put it there.
Individuals - People from nearly every country publish pages on the Web, representing a wide variety of views and languages.
Universities and Research Institutes - Universities put entire courses online as well as provide space for their faculty and students to produce Web pages. Many universities have institutional repositories for the scientific publications authored by their faculty..
Government Agencies - In order to make information available to more people, government, ministries, and local governments are publishing many documents on the Web.
Companies - Many companies publish financial documents and press releases on their sites. The Web is also a major marketing tool for many companies to provide information about their products. Nike produces a popular site full of sports information.
Organizations - Organizations have agendas and opinions that they want you to know about. The American Lung Association educates about the dangers of smoking on its Web page.
Commercial publishers - Commercial publishers such as Elsevier use the web as a distribution channel for their products. Part of the information, normally citations and abstracts, on their sites is freely accessible, access to full text is usually by subscription only.
Quality and trustworthiness
There is a lot of information to be found on the Internet, but the quality and trustworthiness is very varying. It's important to learn to judge the quality and trustworthiness of information you will find there.