Editorial Introduction to Issue 6
Ariadne: The compact edition....
Welcome to this, issue 6 of the Web version of Ariadne. Comparisons with the last edition will show a large reduction in the number of articles, features and stories. This is explained in the editorial for the last edition, but to recap, each edition of the Web version of Ariadne is split into two "happenings":
- An edition to appear at the same time as the parallel paper edition. This will contain all of the material that is in the paper edition, as well as other articles, reviews and conference reports. In all, there will be about 35 articles in this "happening".
- A major update to appear about a month after the aforementioned edition. This "happening" will consist of about 5 or 6 articles, reviews and reports; it will be integrated with the main edition, though the new material will be clearly indicated. The major update for this edition will be on December 21st.
Splitting an issue into two "happenings" will have two effects:
- Readers will not, as some of them have pointed out, be overwhelmed with a large amount of material in one go...
- ...however, readers will have new material to select and read every month.
The editor chooses...
...not to be vain, else he would probably pick the caption competition from this issue! Seriously, for this issue, the editor picks the search engines article, on Yahoo UK and Ireland, by Tracey Stanley. This is a good look at a UK version (in that the results are biased in favour of UK resources) of one of the oldest Web-based indexes. The benefits of having UK-based indexes and search engines, which contain only, or have a bias towards, UK resource descriptions, are clear; searching the index, if it is based in the UK, takes less time and is relatively network friendly, as does checking out resources discovered through said index.