Librarians’ Internet Index in Peril

Michael McGrorty Puts It Best: “The death-by-starvation of LII would be a terrific loss to the library world. If we cannot save LII we may as well admit that we can’t meet any significant challenge in this business. Let’s put our heads together and see what can be done. LII has been there for all of us, now it’s time for us to be there for LII.”

March 3, 2006 by Blake Uncategorized 6

GregS* says:

March 3, 2006 at 7:26 am

what’s the budget?
No good putting heads together unless we know what we’re talking about.

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leeb says:

March 3, 2006 at 9:10 am

Function for the end user, not librarians
That is exactly the problem: “LII is a function for librarians run by librarians”. Rather, LII should be a function for the public/end user run by librarians. Isn’t this duplication, anyway?

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Anonymous Patron says:

March 3, 2006 at 10:31 pm

Re:what’s the budget?
And what agency is cutting the funding?

We’d at least like to harrass…er contact
them with our views!

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Karl says:

March 3, 2006 at 11:06 pm

Re:what’s the budget?
According to the copyright statement at the bottom of LII pages, “Primary financial support for LII (Librarians’ Internet Index) from the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act, administered in California by the State Librarian. Other sources include the Washington State Library and the California Digital Library.”

One way to help might be to speak to your state about partnering with LII. There’s some information on their Partner Program page.

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lijemo says:

March 3, 2006 at 11:14 pm

What is the LII supposed to be?

What purpose, exactly, is the LII supposed to serve? I’ve tried using it a few times on principal, since it’s suppose to be a Good Thing and all, but the results I’ve retrieved have always been close to worthless. For a directory, I’ve found dmoz.org to be far more useful, and as a search engine… well, it might be a half-step above ask.com (which I gave up on years ago) but that’s not saying much.

Given what a Good Thing the LII is supposed to be, I can only assume I’ve been trying to use it in different ways than it was intended for. So, clarification on it’s intent would be helpful.

(Also, it’s been about a year since I’ve bothered with it, so if there have been any significant improvements in that time, I’ve missed them. I should probably check it out again…)

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Karl says:

March 3, 2006 at 11:45 pm

Re:What is the LII supposed to be?
I find it most useful for finding authoritative sources on relatively broad topics. It’s particularly nice for history and, of course, anything having to do with California or Washington.

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