About the Subject Guide
This subject guide is by no means meant to be a comprehensive guide to information on the Internet. At the most, it hopes to list only a selected number of the literally millions of pages available.
Instead, this guide is designed to provide access to a number of significant sites within each subject area which you may find useful, interesting or just fun! The guide has grown over the years and will continue to do as sites come and go.
The subject guide has been arranged by broad category, with specific subject headings under each. There is also an index which lists subjects alphabetically. Or you may use the Search option at the top of each page.
The sites for each category are usually arranged in a hierarchy, depending upon how specific the information is that the site contains. For example, in the History category, a site that covers more than one of the specific subheadings will be placed into the main category page. For example, a site about ancient Rome, will be found in the Ancient subheading. However, a site that covers ancient Rome, plus the Renaissance plus the Industrial Revolution will be placed in the History page.
Within each page, there is the potential for sites to be further subdivided into more detailed subheadings. For example, the Business page has subdivisions of Accountancy, Business Plans, Directories, Professional Organisations, Small Business and Stocks.
For consistency, many of these subdivisions are used across a number of pages. These are currently:
- Biographies
- Databases
- Dictionaries and Encyclopedias - (also includes glossaries, handbooks and so on)
- Directories - (pages that are "Yahoo"-style lists of web pages)
- Education
- Government Bodies
- History
- Images
- Kids
- News and Reviews
- Professional Organisations - (includes not-for-profit associations and industry special interest groups )
- Publications
- Search Engines - (for searching only within the relevant subject area)
- Statistics
- Student Resources - (there is obviously some overlap with the "Kids" subdivision; usually, the site's own description determines which subdivision is used)
- Weblogs
although more will be added as the Guide continues to grow.
Sites are also subdivied on the basis of location. While this is primarily done to highlight Australian sites, some other sites relating to specific locations may also be included. The location subdivision is usually based on country, but occasionally a regional heading such as Africa is used where appropriate.
In general, there are three reasons a site has been added to the list.
Firstly, a site may be added because of the quality of its content, such as Australasian Legal Information Institute Page, or because it is the online version of a well-known information resource, such as The Sydney Morning Herald.
Secondly, a site may contain a large number of links to other sites in the same subject area, such as Cyberdance, which has over 3500 dance related links on its pages.
Lastly, a site may be added as a reminder of the range of information which is available on the web. You may not be a Sydney Swans fan, or like music by the Smashing Pumpkins, or collect Barbie Dolls, but hopefully the listing of sites like these will prompt you to seek out your own special interests.
As the Internet contains information other than that produced by Blacktown City Council, there can be no responsibility on the part of Council for the accuracy, timeliness or nature of the material retrieved.
Of course, we would like your help. If there is a site you believe should be on our page, then contact us by phone on (02)9839-6601, or fax on (02)9831-2690 or email.