Contents

Help! How Do I Use These Links?

1. Some of the Early Aspects of Programming Chess

Chess Programming Wiki by Mark Lefler A repository of information about programming computers to play chess. Their goal was to be a reference for every aspect of chess programming. The site closed about 2018. This is an archive of the site from 2017. https://web.archive.org/web/20171217115226/http://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/Programming
Chess Programming by Francois Dominic Laramee A complete non-technical six part series about programming computers to play chess written in the year 2000. (1) Getting Started, (2) Data Structures, (3) Move Generation, (4) Basic Search, (5) Advanced Search, and (6) Evaluation Functions https://web.archive.org/web/20160605071033/https://www.gamedev.net/page/resources/_/technical/artificial-intelligence/chess-programming-part-i-getting-started-r1014
Game Theory - Computer Chess Notes by Dr A. N. Walker Many aspects of programming chess are described here very well. Included are alpha-beta pruning, iterative deepening, killers and history, transposition tables, quiescence, the horizon effect, null moves and other topics of interest. https://web.archive.org/web/20070122035937/http://www.maths.nottingham.ac.uk/personal/anw/G13GT1/compch.html
Game trees. Alpha-beta search by Zhifeng Xiao This is the best description that I know of for the alpha-beta algorithm. Excellent illustrative diagrams and code are included. https://web.archive.org/web/20080621135220/http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~cs251/OldCourses/1997/topic11/
Parallel Computing Works A extensive detail of the work done at the Caltech Concurrent Computation Program, Pasadena, California. https://netlib.org/utk/lsi/pcwLSI/text/BOOK.html
	Chapter 13.1 Computer Chess by Guy Robinson The Computer Chess section of the book. https://netlib.org/utk/lsi/pcwLSI/text/node341.html#SECTION001630000000000000000
Deep Thought's Evaluation Function Tuning Program by Andreas Nowatzyk (on Tim Mann's Page) Andrew was one of the contributors to the Deep Thought project while he was in grad school. https://www.tim-mann.org/deepthought.html
Chess Program Sources by Paul Verhelst Paul had this listing of available source code for chess programs. Many of the links might not work anymore. You can try archive.org for those that don't. https://web.archive.org/web/20230925185839/https://verhelst.org/1997/03/09/sources/
Homeostatic Chess Player by Rick Wagner Chess can even be programmed now as a Java applet. Rick Wagner has an online playable game that uses such an applet, with description of some of the internals that make it tick. https://rjwagner49.com/Robotics/Software/Applet/Chess/
Chessboard Component by Resplendence Software Projects Sp. For Delphi and C++ Builder. Provides a 2-Dimensional chessboard with a drag and drop interface that can keep track of a game and allows full customization of the bitmaps for the pieces, squares and border. Optionally the board is resizable at runtime. All common chess events are implemented (OnLegalMove, OnIllegalMove, OnCapture, OnCheck, OnMate, OnStaleMate, OnDraw etc.) The component includes the engine of Tom's Simple Chess Program and calculates using its own thread. Optionally it allows you to use your own custom engine instead as well. Just drop a Chessbrd component on a form and you are very close to a complete multithreaded chess application. A Delphi example project has been included to demonstrate the common features. https://www.resplendence.com/chessbrd
Chess Archive - Endgames by Ken Thompson Ken has made available a wonderfully elegant and easy to follow online representation of all the endgames that he has solved. https://archive.org/details/thompson-egtbs
All About Tablebases by Chessbase Here is info about the history of endgame tablebases and how to generate them using the tbgen.exe program that comes with ChessBase. https://web.archive.org/web/20121014111802/http://www.chessbase.com/support/support.asp?pid=105
	Shredder Endgame Database by Stefan Meyer-Kahlen An online program where you can set up any position with 6 men or less to get the true value for that position. https://www.shredderchess.com/online-chess/online-databases/endgame-database.html
Chess Tests by Valentin Albillo A comprehensive selection of quite difficult Chess Tests, intended to allow you to test your favorite chess program's abilities, or even your own abilities. Plus results of how various programs do against them. The site no longer exists. This is the site archived from 2013. https://web.archive.org/web/20130107034457/http://membres.multimania.fr/albillo/cmain.htm

2. My own Journey into Computer Chess

Computer Chess - A Memorial to BRUTE FORCE by Louis Kessler All about my personal venture into the computer chess world. During the latter half of the 1970's my program competed in two North American Championships. A wonderful set of memories I shall not forget. https://www.lkessler.com/brutefor.shtml
	The Games of BRUTE FORCE View some of the games of my program with this marvelous game viewer generated by the Palview program. https://www.lkessler.com/b-force.shtml
An Interview with Deep Blue by John Burstow A humorous article where Deep Blue provides advice for aspiring youngsters to improve their chess. https://www.lkessler.com/deepblue.shtml
What Computer Chess Can Tell Us About Intelligence by Louis Kessler A Commentary I did for CBC Radio across Canada, broadcast on Feb 11, 2003. https://web.archive.org/web/20080612051634/http://www.cbc.ca/insite/COMMENTARY/2003/2/11.html
Computer Chess - A Movie by Andrew Bujalski This is a movie released in July 2013. It is fictional, but illustrates realistically what it was like to be a computer chess programmer in the early days. There's good some history for computer chess at the movie site as well. https://www.computerchessmovie.com/

3. Chess Engines

Current chess engines are different from full chess programs in that they simply calculate moves. They have no graphical interface of their own. Today's engines are stronger than the strongest humans.

TCEC - Thoresen Chess Engines Competition This site conducts comprehensive chess engine competitions. https://tcec-chess.com/
CCRL - Computer Chess Rating List by Graham Banks, Ray Banks, Sarah Bird, Kirill Kryukov and Charles Smith Maintains list of the rankings of all chess engines. https://www.computerchess.org/
Stockfish by Tord Romstad, Joona Kiiski and Marco Costalba An open source chess engine considered currently to be one of the strongest in the world. https://stockfishchess.org/
	Stockfish on GitHub by Marco Costalba This is the developer area where you can download Stockfish C++ code and work with it. https://github.com/mcostalba/Stockfish
	Why AI Chess Bots Are Virtually Unbeatable by Wired This 2024 YouTube video features Levy Rozman (Gotham Chess) playing Stockfish while having Gary Linscott answering Levy's questions and explaining how Stockfish works. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdFLEfRr3Qk
Houdini Chess Engine by Robert Houdart A longtime top competitor to Stockfish. https://www.cruxis.com/chess/houdini.htm
Dragon by Don Dailey, Larry Kaufman and Mark Lefler Commercial engine, formerly known as Komodo which was onsidered one of the top three. https://komodochess.com/
Critter by Richard Vida Not quite as good as Houdini, Stockfish and Komodo, but of interest to me because it is Open Source and has the strongest chess engine written in Delphi. https://sourceforge.net/projects/critterchess/
Chess Programming by Thomas Petzke Information about programming Chess Engines as well as his chess engine named iCE. http://www.fam-petzke.de/chess_home_en.shtml
Chess Engine (on Wikipedia) Wikipedia has quite a bit of interesting information about Chess Engines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_engine
DecodeChess The first AI chess tutor. Explains the why behind chess moves using an AI algorithm combining the merits of a chess master and the chess engine Stockfish. https://decodechess.com/

4. Recorded Games by Earlier Programs

The Chessgames.com Online Games Database contains the best collection. Many of the early Computer Chess Tournaments are included, but games are unfortunately not accessible by tournament. Here is a listing of the most notable programs of earlier days.

Chess 4.0 and 4.7 by Larry Atkin and David Slate 20 games, 1972 to 1980. 11 wins, 6 losses, 3 draws. Includes the 5 games played against David Levy in 1978 which were 1 win, 3 losses, 1 draw. https://www.chessgames.com/player/chess.html
Belle by Joe Condon and Ken Thompson. 17 games from 1977 to 1990. 7 wins, 7 losses, 3 draws. https://www.chessgames.com/player/belle.html
Cray Blitz by Robert Hyatt, Harry Nelson and Albert Gower.. 7 games from 1981 to 1993. 3 wins, 4 losses. https://www.chessgames.com/player/cray_blitz.html
Mephisto by Richard Lang (and others) 87 games from 1983 to 1998. 32 wins, 44 losses, 11 draws. Includes a draw with Karpov in 1983, 9 losses to Kasparov in 1985 and a win over Judit Polgar in 1990. https://www.chessgames.com/player/mephisto.html
Hitech by Hans Berliner, Carl Ebeling, Murray Campbell, and Gordon Goetch. 22 games from 1986 to 1995. 5 wins, 16 losses, 1 draw. https://www.chessgames.com/player/hitech.html
Rebel by Ed Schröder 103 games from 1986 to 2001. 47 wins, 28 losses, 28 draws. Most games are against humans. https://www.chessgames.com/player/rebel.html
Deep Thought 116 games from 1988 to 1994. 73 wins, 28 losses, 15 draws. Includes games against Kasparov. was the predecessor of Deep Blue. https://www.chessgames.com/player/deep_thought.html
Fritz by Frans Morsch and Matthias Feist 283 games from 1991 to 2012. 92 wins, 120 losses, 71 draws. Includes games against Kasparov and Anand. https://www.chessgames.com/player/fritz.html
	Play against Fritz online Free online play against the program. Requires a free ChessBase (Playchess) account. https://fritz.chessbase.com/en/Fritz
Deep Blue 42 games from 1993 to 1997. 16 wins, 9 losses, 16 draws. Includes games against Kasparov and Judit Polgar. https://www.chessgames.com/player/deep_blue.html
Deep Junior by Shay Bushinsky and Amir Ban 98 games from 2000 to 2013. 44 wins, 14 losses, 40 draws. https://www.chessgames.com/player/deep_junior.html
	Deep Junior Timeline by Jorn Barger A history of the development of Deep Junior. https://web.archive.org/web/20120525042526/http://www.robotwisdom.com/ai/deepjunior.html
	Deep Fritz 73 games from 2000 to 2015. 16 wins, 19 losses, 38 draws. https://www.chessgames.com/player/deep_fritz.html
All Other Computer Games Listed This is a Google search to all the computer listings at chessgames.com. https://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=computer+site%3Achessgames.com

5. Computer Chess Organizations

The International Computer Games Association (ICGA) Information about the society and links to society events. They were formerly the ICCA (International Computer Chess Association). https://icga.org/
	The ICGA Journal An excellent quarterly publication, very technical in nature, with up to date news, results, and the latest algorithms used in writing computer chess programs. https://icga.org/?page_id=26
	ICGA Investigations Information about the site that was set up by the ICGA to gather data to ensure computer chess programs entered in tournaments are not stolen or cloned. https://www.chessprogramming.org/ICGA_Investigations
The Swedish Computer Chess Association Performs program vs program benchmarks and maintains the comprehensive Swedish Rating List. https://ssdf.bosjo.net/

6. Computer Chess History

Mastering the Game - A History of Computer Chess by the Computer History Museum An on-line exhibition related to computer chess from 1945 to 1997. https://www.computerhistory.org/chess/
History of Computer Chess About ancient programs, computer chess pioneers and chess programming history. https://web.archive.org/web/20180227133836/https://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/History
Computer Chess (on Wikipedia) A very nice article with a summarized history of Computer Chess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_chess
World Computer Chess Champions A list of the past winners of the World Computer Chess Championships and the World Microcomputer Chess Championships. There are links to pages with information about many of the programs. https://web.archive.org/web/20130111005922/http://www.worldchesschampions.com/wcc_computer.php
Computer Chess History by Bill Wall A summary of the important events in Computer Chess - from 1947 to present. https://web.archive.org/web/20120121214035/http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lab/7378/comphis.htm
	ACM Computer Chess by Bill Wall Lists all the competitors and the winners at each ACM Computer Chess tournament from 1971 to 1994. https://web.archive.org/web/20120123052639/http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lab/7378/acm.htm
Antique Chess Programs by Carey Bloodworth What used to be a terrific resource with information about most early Chess programs, their authors, and the availability of their original source code. Unfortunately, it is no longer maintained. https://web.archive.org/web/20071221115817/http://classicchess.googlepages.com/Chess.htm
Rec.games.chess Frequently Asked Questions by Stephen Pribut Steve maintained this authoritative file up to 2002. It is still jam packed full. of information. http://www.faqs.org/faqs/games/chess/part1/

7. Chess Programmers of the 70's and early 80's.

The History of Computer Chess: An AI Perspective A video of a Computer Chess panel with Monty Newborn, Murray Campbell, Edward Feigenbaum, David Levy and John McCarthy from September 8, 2005. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvU_fnLWRRk&t=10s
Hans Berliner's Publications Author of HiTech and the developer of the B* search algorithm (and also a former World postal chess champion). He wrote or co-wrote 26 papers on Computer Chess between 1973 and 1996. https://web.archive.org/web/20121002010823/http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/indices/a-tree/b/Berliner:Hans_J=.html
	The B* Tree Search Algorithm An abstract of the article about the algorithm. (I consider this to be the penultimate algorithm. Someone, please, put this into a crunching machine and you will achieve a human-like chess player of extraordinary strength - lkessler) https://web.archive.org/web/20080611104640/http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/events/dls/1995-1996/Berliner.php
Murray Campbell Worked with Tony Marsland and Hans Berliner in the early 80s on Computer Chess theory. Was one of the people who worked on the 1997 version of Deep Blue. https://web.archive.org/web/20061209222928/http://domino.research.ibm.com/comm/research_people.nsf/pages/msc.index.html
	An Enjoyable Game. How HAL plays chess. by Murray Campbell In this intriguing in-depth article, Murray explores whether the computer HAL of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey demonstrates intelligence through its chess playing. https://web.archive.org/web/20120630015728/http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-books/Hal/chap5/five1.html
Robert Hyatt Author of CRAY BLITZ in the 70's, and the current program CRAFTY. https://web.archive.org/web/20120717034516/http://www.cis.uab.edu/info/faculty/hyatt/hyatt.html
Tony Marsland Author of WITA and AWIT of the 70's. Currently the President of the International Computer Chess Association. https://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~tony/
	Computer Chess Methods A paper written in 1997 for the Encyclopedia of Artificial Intelligence. Includes: 1. Historical Perspective, 2. Terminology (techniques and algorithms), 3. Strengths and Weaknesses of programs, 4. and 5. Bibliography and Abbreviations. https://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~tony/OldPapers/encyc.mac-1987.pdf
Monroe (Monty) Newborn Professor of Computer Science at McGill University in Montreal, author of Ostrich (1972-1988), and a leader in the promotion of Computer Chess worldwide. This is an information page on computer chess by and about Monty Newborn. https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~newborn/
Jonathan Schaeffer Wrote many important papers on parallel search techniques for computer chess. Author of PHOENIX (actually an 80's program). https://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~jonathan/
	Chinook - The World's Best Checkers Program Jonathan Schaeffer's checkers program - with the attainable goal of solving the game of checkers. Will chess be solved next? https://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~chinook/
	Let's Play Checkers Want to play Chinook online? You can! https://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~chinook/play/
Ken Thompson The author of BELLE, and first person to develop chess-specific hardware. Ken also pioneered and developed tablebases (i.e. perfect play) for a large number of endgames. http://cs.bell-labs.co/who/ken/
	Ken, Unix, and Games by Dennis Ritchie An interesting article about Ken and his work on Computer Chess. https://web.archive.org/web/20150205025231/http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/ken-games.html
	Ken Thompson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Ken's programming history with a nice picture of Ken. Ken was one of the creators of the Unix Operating System, developed the B programming language (a precursor to C), developed UTF-8 encoding, and lots more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Thompson
	Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie Pictures and important events about Ken and Dennis' achievements, in their development of Unix together and Ken's achievements in computer chess. Dennis passed away Oct 12, 2011 at age 70. https://en.chessbase.com/post/ken-thompson-dennis-ritchie-win-japan-nobel-prize

8. Books Available on Computer Chess

Computer Chess Books by Louis Kessler My own listing of valuable reference works from 1997 and earlier for those interested in Computer Chess history. https://www.lkessler.com/ccbooks.shtml
Amazon.com - Query Results on Computer Chess A listing of about a hundred books, with noted indications as to which ones are now hard to find. https://www.amazon.com/s?k=%2Bcomputer+%2Bchess&i=stripbooks-intl-ship&ref=nb_sb_noss

9. Other Great Chess and Computer Chess Sites

Susan Polgar Chess Daily News and Information by Susan Polgar The GM and former World Women's Champion continuously brings the latest chess news to you though her pictures, videos and interviews. https://susanpolgar.com/home/
ChessBomb Broadcasts mosts significant chess events live, with realtime computer engine analysis. https://chessbomb.com/
Chessbase News The site I like best for Chess and Computer Chess news from the makers of Chessbase. https://en.chessbase.com/
	ChessBase The stand-alone chess database that has become the standard throughout the world. There used to be a free ChessBase light version, but that is no longer available. https://shop.chessbase.com/en/categories/chessbase
Chess Programs and Utilities Here is a nice concise list of all sorts of chess-related programs you might be interested in. https://www.enpassant.dk/chess/softeng.htm
ChessQuotes about Computers by David Lawless Interesting quotes by interesting people. https://web.archive.org/web/20140318151554/http://www.chessquotes.com/topic-computers
365chess Search Do an online search through a database of millions of chess games, or set up a position and see if it is in the database. https://www.365chess.com/search_position.php
Jeff Mallet's Computer Chess Page Jeff had a great selection of categorized Computer Chess links. https://web.archive.org/web/20190713090048/http://www.zillions-of-games.com/Jeff/cchess.html

10. Champions vs Machines

Computer - Grandmaster games 1963-2002 A compiled index of the stored Computer vs GM games along with a link to the 2003-2007 list. https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chesscollection?cid=1001726
Top Players vs Computers 42 interesting games listed from 1984 to 1999. https://www.chessgames.com/player/computer.html
Kasparov Beats Deep Thought This was one of the first major Champion-Machine matches played in October 1989. Game 1. Game 2. Kasparov crushed Deep Thought 2-0. https://web.archive.org/web/20180220061719/https://www.nytimes.com/1990/01/14/magazine/kasparov-beats-deep-thought.html
Kasparov vs Deep Blue A nice summary of the two matches in 1996 and 1997. https://web.archive.org/web/20121219042631/http://www.worldchesschampions.com/kasparov_vs_deepblue.php
Kasparov vs Deep Blue Rematch New York, May 3 to May 11, 1997. In 6 games, Kasparov won 2, lost 1 and 3 were drawn. Kasparov won 3.5 to 2.5. This is the original site as archived by IBM. https://web.archive.org/web/20000229162543/http://www.research.ibm.com/deepblue/home/html/b.html
	Kasparov vs Deep Blue Rematch by Bill Wall Bill Wall's summary of the series, plus a host of other great links relating to match. https://web.archive.org/web/20091028094651/http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lab/7378/deepblu2.htm
	Rematch (miniseries) by Yan England, Bruno Nahon and Andre Gulluni Rematch is an English-language French-Hungarian television six-part miniseries premiering on Disney Plus on May 21, 2025. It stars Christian Cooke as the world chess champion Garry Kasparov, depicting his 1997 match against the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rematch_(miniseries)
Man vs Machine - the Endless Fascination by Ram Prasad An article chronicling the most important matches up to 2003. https://en.chessbase.com/post/man-vs-machine-the-endle-fascination
Garry Kasparov vs Deep Junior Jan 26 - Feb 7, 2003 in New York City. This ended with 1 win each and four draws (3-3). https://www.thechessdrum.net/tournaments/Kasparov-DeepJr/
Garry Kasparov vs X3DFritz A site documenting the Nov 11-16, 2003 match in New York City. This ended with 1 win each and two draws (2-2). Here are the four games. https://www.angelfire.com/fl5/human_fan02/kvsfx3d_assoc-stor.html
Vladimir Kramnik vs Deep Fritz The Nov 25 - Dec 5, 2006 match in Bonn, Germany. Deep Fritz won with 2 wins and 4 draws. https://chesslodge.blogspot.com/2006/11/vladimir-kramnik-vs-deep-fritz.html
	"Fritz plays somehow like... a human" An interview with Kramnik with interesting information about Fritz. https://en.chessbase.com/post/vladimir-kramnik-on-man-vs-machine-and-world-championships
	Other Articles about this match Its very easy to still find info about the match on google because of its unique name. https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=%22brains+in+bahrain%22

11. Challenges to the Chess and Computer Chess Community

Many years ago, I submitted a set of four objectives that I challenged the Chess world to strive for. Here I list the progress towards those challenges.

Checkers is Solved They've solved the game of Checkers. Here's the article in 2007 about the process. Perfect play by both sides leads to a draw. Now let's solve chess! https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.1144079
	Shredders Opening Database by Stefan Meyer-Kahlen Here you can interactively access Shredder's opening book of will over a million moves. It's the largest opening book available online that I know of. https://www.shredderchess.com/online-chess/online-databases/opening-database.html
	Shredders Endgame Database by Stefan Meyer-Kahlen This is Shredder's online endgame database. It includes all endgames of 6 or fewer pieces, except for 5 vs 1. https://www.shredderchess.com/online/endgame-database.html
	Play Online Against Shredder Play against Shredder online at three possible levels - easy, medium and hard. https://www.shredderchess.com/online/play-chess-online.html
Chess by Adam Berent This is a site documenting the development of a computer chess program, sort of very much like I did 50 years ago. Adam details all the steps that he took and the goals he had for his program. https://adamberent.com/home/chess/
	Chess Game Starter Kit Want to program your own move search and evaluation. Here's a program that will do most of what you need to play chess, but leave the search and evaluation up to you. It is written in C#. Adam makes it available free, even for commercial use. So go to it! https://github.com/3583Bytes/ChessCore
Brilliancies by Computers To inspire you, take a look at these games, organized by type of brilliancy. https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chesscollection?cid=1003844#google_vignette

12. The Artificial Intelligence Great Advance since 2017

AlphaZero by Google DeepMind The first program to train itself knowing just the rules and defeat the world's best chess program Stockfish after less than 2 days training. https://www.chessprogramming.org/AlphaZero
	How AI Turned the chess world upside down by Susan Polgar Susan Polgar's lecture at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia https://www.facebook.com/KAUSTOfficial/videos/10156004197629291/
	Garry Chess on the AlphaZero Era by Hikaru Nakamura Grandmaster Hikaru Nakarmura interviews Garry Kasparov about his feelings about what Alpha Zero did for chess. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTxoV8DC48c
	AlphaGo by Google DeepMind The first computer program to defeat a Go world champion. AlphaGo is still supported by DeepMind, whereas AlphaZero is not. https://deepmind.google/research/breakthroughs/alphago/
Leela Chess Zero An open source neural network based chess engine based on AlphaZero, that very quickly became the world's strongest program. https://lczero.org/
Fat Fritz by Frederic Friedel AI was added to Fritz. Called Fat Fritz, it is included in Fritz 17. https://en.chessbase.com/products/fat-fritz
	Chess and Artificial Intelligence by Jean-Michel Pechine on ChessBase Chess News A Feb 15, 2021 article summarizing an interview with Frederic Friedel, the developer of Fat Fritz, giving the history of the program. https://en.chessbase.com/post/chess-and-artificial-intelligence-1
	Fat Fritz 2 is a rip-off by The Stockfish, Leela Chess Zero and Lichess teams This article explains where the parts of Fat Fritz came from. https://lichess.org/blog/YCvy7xMAACIA8007/fat-fritz-2-is-a-rip-off
Maia Chess A human-like neural network chess engine. It's not designed to be best, but instead it's designed to play like a human at various strength levels. https://maiachess.com/

Help! How Do I Use These Links?

1. I link to individual pages, not just to home pages of sites. My links will identify good pages that are buried deep in a site.
2. I have organized my links by site, and sub-site. This way you can see at a glance what a particular site has to offer.
3. I set up a "Contents" and have navigation hot-links to make it easier to get between sections.
4. I display the web addresses (also known as URLs). It is nice to know where you are going.
5. I give a brief description of what I think is generally useful on each page.

These are home pages of a web site or sub-site. Generally they act as a table-of-contents, containing mostly local links to the rest of the site.

Up-to-date information about current activities and events. These pages are changed quite often, so check them regularly.

These pages give instructions on how to go on in your information quest, where to look next, and increase your level of overall expertise.

A web page that is designed to help you find or do something. It may be an index, guide, or even an online program.

The pages most researchers get really excited about. This is real data that has been made available online.

Collections of files, not designed to be looked at online, but made for downloading (using FTP) to your own computer. May often contain useful software.

Pages with the best collections of links to the multitude of other web sites. If you want to, you can follow all these until the wee hours of the morning.

Finally, you may see the following codes:

• (x) - Link did not work last time I checked.
• (xx) - Link did not work last 2 times I checked.
• Three strikes and they are out. (If I cannot find where they moved to.)