A study reported in Science (04/02/99) estimated the number of documents on the World Wide Web at 320 million, with projections for hundreds of millions more pages to be added within the next few years. Because the Web is growing so rapidly a big challenge into the foreseeable future will remain how to find the precise information you want when you want it, without taking off on a frustrating wild goose chase. The commercial search engines, which catalog the web into massive searchable databases, are growing in their power and sophistication. While they are getting better, they have a long way to go.

A solution for horticulturists is our Factsheet Database. Its creator, Dr. Tim Rhodus, Horticulture and Crop Science at Ohio State University, likes to use the example of looking for information on apples to show how problematic searching can be. Using the popular AltaVista Internet search engine you'll get 2.9 million web pages with the word "apple" present somewhere on the page. Of course just entering the word "apple" is casting too wide a net. Narrow the search to "apple scab" and AltaVista returns 523 pages. Much better, but you'll still need to weed through a combination of educational and commercial sites and judge which offer valid and reliable information. For "apple scab", FactSheet Database returns 251 university produced and endorsed horticultural factsheets from across the United States and Canada. If preferred, regional searches to further narrow results are possible. We feel that we can't highlight too often or too much the value of this resource to Ohio Master Gardeners. The web address is :

http://www.hcs.ohio-state.edu/factsheet.html

Another good way to structure and narrow web searches for Internet-based horticultural information is to use a "starting point" of links. We've done this for you at the Horticulture and Crop Science in Virtual Perspective web site with our page of Internet Links. You will find dozens of sites listed, divided into categories such as "Gardens and Arboreta," "Gardening Resources," "Horticultural Businesses," and "Horticultural Societies and Associations." The web address is:

http://www.hcs.ohio-state.edu/hcs/links.html