Trapping Topic-Based Information - Information Trapping: Real-Time Research on the Web - page 150

tip
sometimes you'll be interested in a city that's fairly small. it may
be so small it really doesn't have a Web site, or there's nothing
much there. in this case, you may want to visit the state's Web
site. often states have sections that contain information on their
various municipalities.
What are you looking for?
Oferings at various city Web sites vary a lot. Generally the larger the city is,
the greater the oferings are, but any city site that's active at all generally has
something. It's important to be very speciic about what you're looking for.
Depending on your topic, you might look for events calendars, press releases,
city council meeting notes, adverse weather announcements, warnings of
scams and other crimes, or announcements of changes to city services.
hat's not to say there isn't much, much more at the average city site, such
as online services to provide permits and such, searchable databases of city
codes, budgets, contact lists, and so on.
Trapping the information
How deeply you want to trap on a city site depends on what you want to use
it for. Want to be a better-informed, more active citizen? hen look for the
What's New page and put a page monitor on it if there's no option for e-mail
alerts or RSS feeds. Want to keep close tabs on what the city council is doing
and the business of the city? Watch the press release pages and monitor the
page that has the city council meeting notes.
City sites vary on how many built-in trapping mechanisms they ofer. Some-
times they ofer a newsletter that covers the entire site. Sometimes they ofer
e-mail alerts of press releases and alert type information (weather issues, etc).
It's rarer that RSS feeds are ofered, but more and more feeds are being added
to city sites all the time. For the most part, though, I suspect you'll have to rely
on your own page monitors. State Web sites have far more information, and
from what I can tell are better prepared with alert services.
state sites
Finding a state Web site is simple. Just enter the URL state. xx .us in your
browser, in which xx is the postal code of a state (NY, PA, SC, FL, and so on).
Note that this does not work for DC (the address for the District of Columbia