Background article used for the WELL Factsheet on finding water and sanitation information

Updated - Monday 26 March 2007

Ingeborg Krukkert (IRC) & Cor Dietvorst (IRC) (2004)

Background article used for the WELL Factsheet on finding water and sanitation information
(Revised edition, 05 Nov 2004)

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information on it (1)

Introduction

During the last few years much more information on water supply and sanitation in developing countries has become available on the Internet, not only from international development agencies but also from governmental and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in developing countries. Generally most of this information can be viewed or downloaded free of charge.

Currently there are over 810 million Internet users worldwide (2) who can access billions and billions of WWW pages with information, either directly or via search engines, or through databases, often referred to as the “deep web”.

Taking the water sector people in mind as target group we will describe the most relevant search engines, gateways or portals and databases to start your search with. It is important to know what source works for which purpose, and how to use each source effectively. We will conclude with some search strategies for general subject searches, and for specific items (3).

We hope this guide will make a difference between getting results and finding answers!