Overview

NCSA What’s New was an early World Wide Web discovery resource maintained by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications during the rapid expansion of public Web activity in the early 1990s.

Maintained by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina, the page presented information concerning newly available websites, network resources, software, and other developments associated with the emerging World Wide Web.

At a time when the Web remained sufficiently small for significant new resources to be announced through individual curated pages, What’s New provided users with a means of discovering material beyond resources they already knew.

The page consequently occupies an intermediate position between manually maintained lists of Web resources and the automated discovery and search systems that followed.

Its documentary significance also extends beyond the resources themselves. Contemporary entries provide evidence concerning when particular websites and services became publicly visible to sections of the early Web community.

JumpStation, recorded separately as FWX-000014, was among the early web services announced through NCSA’s What’s New material.

Preservation Note

NCSA What’s New no longer operates as a current discovery service.

Historical versions and associated material survive through institutional and external archival sources. Surviving copies provide a partial chronological record of the rapidly developing Web during the period in which the resource was actively maintained.

The Bureau records the object as an archival record rather than as an active legacy website because its original function depended upon continuing curation of newly available network resources.