Conceptualising Resource Discovery on the Internet

Information retrieval by means of Internet search portals has so far been treated as an extension of “classic” information retrieval technology adapted to search data captured from the Internet (as opposed to data captured from analogue media such as newsprint and periodicals). This paper argues that the classic information retrieval model is inappropriate for resource discovery on the Internet, and try to explain why this is so. Some resource discovery services on and off the Internet are studied, and resulting from this analysis, some new concepts that captures aspects of Internet resource discovery are proposed. It is conjectured that the present lack of awareness of such concepts results in impaired performance for Internet search portals.