dbClear

Subject-specific clearinghouses aim to provide users of specialized information with guidance through the increasingly complex landscape of web resources by offering curated collections of links organized into hierarchical categories. Early experience with their implementation (e.g., at SUB Göttingen and IZ Bonn) demonstrates high user acceptance and highlights their value in day-to-day information retrieval. Today, they are recognized as an essential component of virtual subject libraries. Long-term success depends on the use of clearinghouse creation tools that incorporate the advanced features developed during the project and are maintained by an organization with IT expertise. As a secondary benefit, they can serve as a means of limiting the scope of searches within the document space of virtual libraries. High-quality search engines only deliver satisfactory results when they do not have to search every source worldwide.