Hakia asks Librarians for Website Submissions
Now here is an intriguing way to possibly gain $500 or $1,000 for your library and at the same time interest library science students or perhaps even high school or undergraduates in search technology and information on the Web generally. Hakia has announced the following competition:
We invite librarians and information professionals to help us identify credible Web sites. By our definition, a credible Web site has accurate, current, and accessible information that fulfills most of these criteria:
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Peer review. The publisher of the site must have a peer review process or strict editorial controls to ensure the accuracy, dependability and merit of the published information. Most government institutions, academic journals, and news channels have such review mechanisms in place.
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No commercial bias. The publisher of the site shall have no commercial intent or bias. For example, for travel related recommendations consider U.S. Department of State travel portal and not Travelocity.
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Currency. The information on the site should be current and links should be working.
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Source authenticity. The publisher (preferably) should be the owner/producer of the content.
Here is the wording about prizes:
“Your credible site submissions will enter you to win prizes. Every month, hakia will give away the following thank-you prizes to 3 librarians:
$500 book donation to your library stacks (1 prize)
$1,000 conference grant (2 prizes)
The book prize will be awarded by a raffle. The conference grants will be awarded to participants with most URL submissions.”
Now, I know that cynics will scoff, “Great—Hakia gets huge numbers of hours of free labor and free data sifting.” But at least there is a search engine out there that is willing to try some innovative marketing. I imagine that there are some creative librarians in resource-poor areas who know some bright kids or who could partner with some social science or science teachers and get some kids interested in a Web project that would engage in them in close reading and analytical thinking and actually help to hone a search tool and in so doing perhaps help researchers and consumers find vital information that could improve lives. And if some kids won, they could help choose the books the prize money would pay for. Good for Hakia. I am tempted to try for the dough myself—maybe we could use the $1,000 to help lead a “Librarians in Search” conference. It would pay for a nice lunch, anyway.
Let’s hope that other search/Web 2.0 firms try to make Web surfing fun and worthwhile for cash-strapped libraries and other nonprofit institutions everywhere.
September 26th, 2008 at 6:48 am
This is an interesting way to develop a relationship with that community while building a good base of information. However, I wonder about not including commercial sites. Here is my argument: many professionals like myself have turned to the blog format for our internet presence, and we realize that publishing one ad after another is useless for having a site noticed, so we include content which explains our jobs, provide information on topics related to our jobs, or maybe topics that have a loose connection to the main goal of our sites which interest us (such as community information). Yes the ultimate goal is conversion of visitors into clients, but I know that many of my readers are not in my service area, so I try to serve them with information too. To that end, should each site be evaluated on its merit of providing content without concern of the sites goal?