Mission Statement
BPubs.com is a directory based Internet
search engine that strives to cover the topic of Business Publications.
By eliminating the noise of “homepages, index pages, and other extraneous
web site components”, our users are able to extract what they truly searching
for – content. Our target audience of corporate and business users will
become repeat visitors because we save them time finding the information
they need.
What’s wrong with the Search Engines?
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The Internet Search Engines index too many
pages. The use of robot technology to “spider” web sites, as well
as the inability of webmasters to adequately use the “robots.txt” standard,
has led to a proliferation of unneeded content that pollutes their databases.
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The need for “hands-on” indexing has
not been properly addressed by most of the Internet Search Engines.
The open directory movement and the directory based indexes represent important
strides, but this evolution must be taken further.
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The Search Engines require an excessive amount
of time and effort to weed out quality content. Users entering search terms
are bombarded with tens of thousands of possible content matches. When
the user clicks on a possible site match, the productivity clock continues
to “tick” as the user follows the hyperlink trail only to find the eventual
information to be of little use, or to find a cleverly disguised sales
pitch (i.e. no content whatsoever).
How can Information Access be Improved
on the Internet?
A new generation of search engines
must emerge – Niche Search Engines, Content Engines, Topical Collections;
call them what you will, a narrower focus on Internet content must be achieved.
In the future, we believe the following trends must emerge :
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Content Collections will be developed on the
basis of user audience and purpose. Picking an audience and sticking with
that audience will enable Web Sites to narrow the amount and quality of
available content.
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Content Collections will impose limitations
on the format and topics of the content collected. A site may limit its
collection by a “file format” such as MP3’s; or collect content that
meet certain “structural criteria” such as “short stories” of more than
1500 words.
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A formal Collection Policy will be posted
and adhered to in defining submission and selection criteria. If Web Sites
are going to mimic the traditional purpose of Libraries and Librarians,
the least they can do is follow the same guidelines and methodology that
have been around for thousands of years.
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Sites will conduct “Proactive Collection Development”.
Rather than simply waiting for appropriate submissions of content, Collection
Developers will take part in the search process and build their collections
to reduce their users search time.
Where does BPubs.com fit in?
BPubs.com has embraced the “Collection
Development” approach, placing standards on the site’s content selection
criteria.
Our site has been developed with the “Business
User” in mind – an audience that certainly can appreciate the
value of time. Our audience can include anyone from Small Business Owners
to the CEO’s of major corporations, and can vary from those interested
in starting a Business, to those conducting academic research at a major
University. Ultimately, our audience is interested in the challenges of
“business success”.
Our collection is made up of Business Publications
and longer Articles. The source of these publications can vary greatly:
from Government Agencies, to online Business Zines, to Consulting companies
making their expertise available for public consumption. Best of all, we
won’t index a publication unless it’s available free of charge.
Our niche is to direct business users to
quality business content. For businesses providing content, we offer
a new method of marketing a firm’s expertise – through its publications.
Unlike marketing a website, submitting publications can gather a highly
targeted audience. For the end user, expertise and research is offered
for free; and if you’re looking for help, what better way to evaluate
expertise than to review a paper written by a potential consultant.
BPubs.com is simply dedicated to better access of business information
on the Internet.
About Steven Matthews
BPubs.com was developed and is maintained by Steven Matthews. Steve
is the Founder & Principal at Stem Legal; he also maintains the Vancouver Law Librarian Blog. As a professional Law Librarian with an active interest in
business research and search engines, Steve launched BPubs in 1999
as an experiment into content level indexing. BPubs now consistently helps out 40,000 business visitors each
month.
