Curated by: Luigi Canali De Rossi
 


Friday, November 12, 2004

Information You Can Trust: Librarians' Index To The Internet

Surfing the World Wide Web can be both an enthralling, enlightening journey of discovery as well as a nightmarish trip into darkness and confusion.

If you're searching for information from specific sites, ones that you know and trust because you've been there before and found what you were looking for then, then the experience shouldn't be traumatic.

However, if you're searching randomly, by entering a keyword or phrase into a search engine and then clicking through to the resulting sites and pages, how can you be certain that the information you're being presented is reliable? Indeed, how can you be certain that the page your viewing is actually from the site it purports to be from (see phishing).

 

 

The Librarians' Index to the Internet (LII) is an outstanding, highly trustworthy resource. With the motto "Information You Can Trust" prominently featured on their logo, LII is a searchable, annotated subject directory of more than 14,000 Internet resources selected and evaluated by librarians for their usefulness to users of public libraries. LII is used by both librarians and the general public as a reliable and efficient guide to Internet resources.

"The mission of Librarians' Index to the Internet is to provide a well-organized point of access for reliable, trustworthy, librarian-selected Internet resources, serving California, the nation, and the world."

All efforts are focused on gathering and organizing high-quality resources. Sites that are purely commercial with no informational content are rejected.

There are 8 dedicated people on the LII staff, as well as over 100 contributors from libraries in California and Washington State.

"We have a rigorous commitment to data quality. Every site entered in the LII database is reviewed at least twice--sometimes three or four times--before it goes "live." An active weeding program keeps us current--while sites change and die all the time, LII almost never has more than 100 "dead" sites."

Every week, LII provides a list of all the new entries added on the previous week. 'New This Week' is made available either as an email newsletter (there are 17,000 subscribers in 85 countries) or as an RSS Feed.

A trustworthy knowledge resource, continuously updated, with a strong focus on data quality AND with updates made available via RSS. Worth checking out?

 
 
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posted by on Friday, November 12 2004, updated on Tuesday, May 5 2015

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