NET EFFECTS: How Librarians Can Manage the Unintended Consequences of the Internet Edited by Marylaine Block

Chapter One: Regaining the Right To Select

Creating our own Indexes of the Web

Best Information on the Net http://library.sau.edu/bestinfo/
the site I created for St. Ambrose University in 1995.

Colorado Virtual Library for Kids http://aclin.org/index_cvl.html
A great example of how selection can in itself be educational - in the section for teachers, sites are searchable by grade level, subject, and Colorado state educational standards and benchmarks.

Librarians Index to the Internet http://lii.org
a great, annotated, searchable, browsable index of carefully chosen sites. Originally the work of web goddess Carole Leita, the work is now carried on by Karen Schneider and a team of California librarians.

Establishing Selection Policies for Inclusion on our Indexes

lii.org Selection Criteria
http://lii.org/search/file/pubcriteria

Selection Policy, Best Information on the Net http://library.sau.edu/bestinfo/selpolicy.htm
The selection policy I wrote for the web site I created for O'Keefe Library, St. Ambrose University.

Creating our own Collections

The American Memory Project http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amhome.html
the Library of Congress's project to digitize and organize its collections thematically.

Colorado Virtual Library for Kids http://www.aclin.org/
click on For Kids, Parents and Teachers, then click on Teachers. Carefully chosen sites are searchable by Colorado Department of Educatio Standards and Benchmarks, as well as by grade level.

Digital Library Federation Public Access Collections http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/b/bib/bib-idx?c=dlfcoll
Search or browse through several hundred digital library projects.

JSTOR - the Scholarly Journal Archive http://www.jstor.org/
instead of accepting the time-limited range of journals that the aggregators have selected, we can purchase scanned complete backfiles of major journal titles chosen by librarians.

The Making of America http://moa.umdl.umich.edu/ and http://library5.library.cornell.edu/moa/
A joint project of the University of Michigan and Cornell to digitize a large number of 19th century books and journals.

Creating Our Own Search Engines

Creating a Yahoo with Values, by Karen Schneider
http://libraryjournal.reviewsnews.com/index.asp?layout=article&articleid=CA232358&publication=libraryjournal
A plan by the librarians who created several of the major indexes to combine their work in a search engine

Supporting Institutional Repositories and Free Electronic Publishing

Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog http://info.lib.uh.edu/sepb/sepw.htm -- Charles Bailey acquaints you with news in the world of scholarly publishing on the web, and links you to his periodically updated Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography.

See also relevant resources in chapters 6 (The Techno-Economic Imperative) and 7 (Continuous Retraining).

Added Articles of Note

"What Is a Library Anymore, Anyway?" Michael A. Keller, Victoria A. Reich and Andrew C. Herkovic. First Monday, May, 2003, http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue8_5/keller/index.html
"Local control of collections is critical both to assure permanence and to provide a key degree of selectivity, which — contrary to the irrational exuberance of making everything available to everybody — is vital to providing service to communities of readers."

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Net Effects Home Page

Chapter Two: Rescuing the Book

Marylaine Block's Home Page

About This Web Site

These pages are designed as a bonus for readers of Net Effects, and feature links to sites recommended by the editor.

To make the fullest use of the resources provided here, you'll need a copy of the book, which is available from Information Today, Inc., September, 2003. ISBN: 1-57387-171-0. Price: $39.50. CLICK HERE if you'd like to order directly online.

Updated September 4, 2003