Research by the Clever Project (1999) has shown that, in attempting to find useful and relevant material, two particular types of site can be particularly helpful. The first type, termed Authorities, are sites that contain information generally regarded as useful, accurate or reliable in some way. The information may consist of anything from a single document to a large archive of data. A typical authority may be an archive of academic papers at a University, an accurate, regularly updated list of share prices, or even the homepage of an enthusiastic and authoritative amateur. Authorities are like the reference books of the Internet. An example might be the BBC news web site, or the Encyclopaedia Britannica, or more specific resources, such as online journals or reference materials created by recognised experts.

But how do we find these authorities? They are often linked to from other sites, called Hubs, which hold lists of useful pages. A hub works a little like a search engine; it provides a list of links which we can jump to, to find information we're searching for. However, a hub is usually very subject specific, and it's static too - there is no database to search, just a list of links to try. Hubs are usually compiled by hand by someone interested in the subject, and are often more useful than a broad search-engine query, since someone has already filtered out the useful stuff from the rubbish. Finding a hub for the key topics that you're interested in can save a lot of time and effort filtering search results. . There's even a hub of hubs within the academic domain, called the Intute.