Public Roads, May / June 2011
Article by Jennifer Boteler
In today’s ever-expanding universe of knowledge, transportation libraries can help researchers find what they need to make sound decisions.
The amount of online information in the world seems to be increasing exponentially. Proof? Just take a look at the Internet. Google recently announced that it has found 1 trillion unique Web pages, but acknowledged that it does not index every page. Further, the company estimates that the number of pages grows by several billion per day.
Beyond the massive volume of indexed pages is an even bigger pool of hidden information stored in databases that remain beyond the reach of standard search engines (the so-called Deep Web). According to a 2006 report, Exploring the Academic Invisible Web, 20 billion to 100 billion documents of academic interest reside on the Deep Web. Factor in the proliferation of low-quality information—increasingly abundant thanks to the ease of publishing online—and the challenge of efficient, successful research becomes clearer.
