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Friday, January 30, 2009

Reference Extract

I'm watching Planning Reference Extract with interest. According to their site:

Reference Extract is envisioned as a web search engine, like Google, Yahoo and MSN. However, unlike other search engines, Reference Extracts will be built for maximum credibility by relying on the expertise and credibility judgments of librarians from around the globe. Users will enter a search term and get results weighted towards sites most often referred to by librarians at institutions such as the Library of Congress, the University of Washington, the State of Maryland, and over 1,400 libraries worldwide.

I wonder how it will differ from one of my favorite sites, The Librarian's Index to the Internet, which describes itself as:

Librarians' Internet Index (LII) is a publicly-funded website and weekly newsletter serving California, the nation, and the world...You can also search and browse our website for the best of the Web. We have over 20,000 entries, also maintained by our librarians and organized into 14 main topics and nearly 300 related topics.

Librarians building a searchable resource of credible sites. Such a good idea that LII began doing it in 1990 as a Gopher bookmark file. (Remember Gopher?) In the current climate, they keep going, despite budget cuts. I wonder now what the future of this valuable, almost 20-year-old resource will be?

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