An Altavista search of sites linking to this specific page on the New Deal Network reveals 14 such websites. A more modest example. The popularity of this URL would have eluded me had it not been for a thank-you note I received via email a few weeks back. Again, an Altavista search found 7 sites, none concerned with the New Deal era per se , linking to this page. Why not scan the whole historical section, I thought.
People find their own uses for online materials.
The challenge on the part of educational web developers is to respond to those uses in a meaningful way. Portals, Vortals and Aortals Commentators have taken to referring to certain sites as portals , gateways that direct traffic to online resources. Yahoo, of course is an exemplary portal. Portals continue to be the most highly visited sites on the Internet, although, like airports, they are not places one would choose to linger. Portals, with their undifferentiated mass of links, have their drawbacks, to which my daughter Chloe, the owner of a pet chinchilla, can attest.