GERHARD (German Harvest Automated Retrieval and Directory)

Gerhard is a fully automatic indexing and classification system of the German World-Wide Web for integrated searching and browsing. It consists of a database-driven robot that collects academically relevant documents, a fast classification module, a database and a trilingual (German, English, and French) user-interface for the service itself as well as for maintaining the service. The integration of searching and browsing mechanisms allows the user to look for “similar” documents very easily. At the moment there are 400 areas of the German WWW defined that are considered academically relevant, with more than a million documents classified and indexed.