Google and beyond: information retrieval on the World Wide Web

Abstract

How do you find information on the World Wide Web? The need for tools to make locating information easier was recognized very early in the development of the Internet. In fact Archie, the program credited with being the world's first Internet search engine, was created in 1990, a year before Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web. The first website, created by Berners-Lee at http://info.cern.ch/ and made available online on 6 August 1991, was also the first web directory, as Berners-Lee kept an ever-growing, categorized list of the websites that other people created. That list became the WWW Virtual Library, a volunteer-maintained catalogue still available at http://vlib.org/. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.