europeforvisitors - 9:35 pm on Apr 18, 2002 (gmt 0)

Also, I was hoping on picking up a few new good analogies similar to the "community analogy".

The analogy I like to use is the READER'S GUIDE TO PERIODICAL LITERATURE, which has been indexing magazine articles for decades. When you look up a topic in the READER'S GUIDE index, you get a list of articles, magazine titles, issue dates, and page numbers. In other words, the READER'S GUIDE doesn't just send you to GENTLEMEN'S QUARTERLY if you're looking for an article on Armani suits--it sends you to the July, 2001 issue, page 79, to read "Knights in Shining Armani."

Another analogy is the academic citation. That analogy is especially relevant since the Web began as a tool for academics and technical types. If you read an academic paper on anything--whether it's Paul Revere tankards or "strange matter" in the universe--you'll find citations that point to specific books, articles, or papers--and often to specific page numbers, which are direct counterparts of URLs.