By: Charles Bowen Mikesart.net Is One Of the Most Ambitious Portals
Journalists are string-savers by nature. We fill our bookshelves
with old as well as new almanacs, factbooks, guides, and
encyclopedias. We jam our pockets full of paper scraps with phone
numbers, statistics, and quotes, sometimes scratched even on
matchbook covers or discarded gum wrappers.
So it's no wonder we also love the Web. It is, after all, the
home to a world of fellow pack rats. The working press, always on
deadline, is especially fond of portals, those cross-reference
intersections put together by kindred spirits who never met a
reference tool they didn't love.
Such a data collector is Michael L. Hill. Since 1997, he has been
quietly building one of the most ambitious informational
clearinghouses on all the Internet. Today he maintains literally
hundreds of pages of links to everything from glossaries,
dictionaries, and calculators to online help for gardening, job-
hunters, and artists.
Unlike many other reference portals that become as jumbled as a
flea market as evermore resources are linked, Hill's Mikesart.net is
constructed with a clear, easy-to-follow format. A career product
designer, Hill brings to the Net three decades of work on merchandising
and custom products, from kiosk presentations to stand-alone software
and, more recently, Web sites. That experience shows in this Web
page.
To jump directly to his reference library, called The Giant
Glossary, visit the site at
http://www.mikesart.net/giantglossarycom,
where the introductory page provides direct connections to these major categories:
o Abstract Terms, including sites covering everything from
proverbs and slang to Ebonics and HTML.
o Converters and Calculators, focusing on weights, liquids,
volume, temperature and length as well as science and business
tools.
o Desk References, from the New York Public Library and the
Library Of Congress to the World Almanac, U.S. Census and other
government databases.
o Dictionaries, including Webster's, Oxford, Cambridge and
specialized resources.
o Encyclopedias, from Britannica to Encarta.
o Glossaries, links to more than 500 specialty word finders,
including those devoted to terms from computing and the Internet
to architecture, home improvement, real estate, law, science,
mathematics, slang, medicine, food and more.
o Kids Place, with sites for the younger set, such as youth-
oriented dictionaries, religious material, encyclopedia and ask-
an-expert services.
o Lexicons, covering words in other languages and earlier
incarnations of English.
o Miscellaneous, from a mortgage calculator and amortization
tables to tools for calculating everything from your body fat to
Bill Gates' current wealth.
o Thesauri, word finders such as Roget's.
o Translate, a dozen or more foreign language resources,
including those for Spanish, German and French, but also Russian,
Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian, and Javanese.
In a hurry? You can search Hill's reference section by keyword.
Click the Search link at the top of the main page. On the
resulting screen, enter a keyword or phrase in the data entry
box. New and featured links are highlighted on the left and right
columns of the Giant Glossary page.
These columns also are used to target seasonally significant
resources. For instance, during tax season, the site links to the
IRS Q&A sections as well as tax preparation tools.
Other considerations for using the resource in your writing and
editing:
o The Giant Glossary is only one section of this enormous site.
Visit the home page for an overview of the entire spread. Tabs
across the top of the screen provide quick access to other areas
of links. Of particular interest to editors and writers will be
the News and Weather tabs. Feature writers also should check out
the Living/Lifestyles, Home/Garden, and Fashion tabs.
o For background on the site and tips on using it, scroll to the
bottom of any page to click the "About This Site" link for
details on its structure, the kinds of search tools used, user
statistics, and more.
o If you decide to pass along information about the site to your
readers, you might want to call attention to the Kids/Learning
tab at the top of the introductory page. The resulting page,
called "Clorisa The Cottage Mouse" is intended for children ages
four to 11 with a love for puzzles and games. It also features
elementary teaching aids.
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Bowen writes columns, articles and books from West Virginia, and is host of the daily Internet News syndicated radio show (http://www.netnewstoday.com).
charlesbowen@compuserve.com
Copyright 2001, Editor & Publisher
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