GERO-INFORMATICS AND THE INTERNET - LOCATING GERONTOLOGY INFORMATION ON THE WORLD-WIDE-WEB (WWW)

The Internet, and in particular the World Wide Web (WWW), are growing at a tremendous rate. information useful to researchers and practition ers in gerontology is scattered and hard to locate, even for experts i n the use of the WWW. In order to locate and organize access to this m aterial, a WWW server was developed for gerontologists, using state-of -the-art Internet search techniques. This report provides background o n the WWW, reasons for its growth, its potential usefulness to geronto logists, and the results of an exhaustive search of over 300 potential sites. Relevant information was discovered in 5 general categories of gerontology-related information: academic institutions, government ag encies, biomedical and health research institutions, general interest sites and data archives.