Trapping Topic-Based Information - Information Trapping: Real-Time Research on the Web - page 158

Keep it simple
You might remember earlier in this chapter my observation that city Web
sites can be fairly complex, state Web sites can be more complex, and U.S.
government Web sites oten are even more complex. So you may be assum-
ing that foreign government sites will be the most confusing of all due to
your possible nonfamiliarity with that country's government or language.
hat assumption is partly true and partly false.
Any oicial government Web site has the potential to be mind-bogglingly
complex. But because your interests are probably not going to be in minu-
tiae that might be buried on such a site, it may not be that diicult to ind
what you're looking for. Except in extremely unusual situations, you will
probably not be interested in the day-to-day issues of a country (and if you
are, you most likely are familiar with the government or language of your
country of interest). Your interest more likely will be broader—a country's
environmental record (but not how it handles recycling in one province), or
its industries (but not the activities of one bakery in one town).
If you do have such focused interest, then I would presume that you're
familiar enough with the country to be able to navigate the oferings of
its Web site without too much diiculty. If you aren't, then try to get the
information you need from news search engines. Conine your queries to
the media of that country, and try to do keyword searches. Sometimes you
can get information from keyword searches of the news that it's tough to get
from a country's Web site.
type of content
What will you ind on the average country's Web site? It varies a lot. For some
countries, you'll barely ind a Web presence. For other countries, you'll ind
very complex oferings that span tens of millions of pages of content.
Let's take for example the Republic of Iceland, which has a Web site at
government.is/. Information on the front page includes pointers to various
ministries, a link page, and even a pointer to Iceland's constitution. he
middle of the front page is kind of a What's New for Iceland ( Figure 7.25 ).