LII is absorbed into the IPL
Let me tell you a story. When I first became a librarian, Librarians' Internet Index was my go-to source. It continued to be so as I sought new resources to teach in my online reference resources classes for librarians, and to add to the stockpile of thousands of subject-based bookmarks I have meticulously organized in my browser's favorites (and no, I don't use del.icio.us or furl; I R OLD SKOOL). LII continued to be really important to me as a technology manager, and I have blogged about good resources found there many times on this site.
When I first read that LII was merging with the Internet Public Library, I felt weak and feverish. Less control over what goes in? Less funding? Less attention? "Is this the faintly disguised death of LII?" I asked myself. But as I talked to people, thought more about the IPL and how much I have used that site over time too, I started to feel better and the fever receded.The iSchool at Drexel's College of Information Science and Technology hosts IPL and now has LII merged with it. Having been very close with both the creator and a manager of LII, I felt that they must be cringing or crying. But maybe not. The one thing I do have to admit is that Internet Public Library is a lot more intuitively named than Librarians' Internet Index. Times change and our old favorites change with them. I hope for a good future for the IPL and whatever form the LII takes within it.
October 30th, 2008 at 10:48 am
I like both the IPL and LII, and use both. However, there are features in LII that don’t seem to have transferred yet to IPL. For example, entries in LII always have the date last updated, which IPL does not. And although the indexing in IPL is better overall, the search results can be disappointing. I searched urban legends (no quotes) in IPL and got a lot of irrelevant results( e.g. the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs). It works better if you put the term in quotes, but in the LII you get the same, very accurate results with or without quotes.
Let’s hope the folks at Drexel combine the best feautres of both!
October 30th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
I remember when LII first started as a project that focused on web sites of use to California librarians. Reviewed by librarians for librarians. It was much smaller and pertinant than the the larger search engines. And the sites helped us do our jobs – especially with homework assignments in our local schools.
I miss the old LII.