DMOZ versus Librarians’ Internet Index

On the World Wide Web I encounter many web guides. In fairness I must say that I don’t make much use of these information sources. Oftentimes I type (as many people do) a few search terms in Google, after which I think by myself: surprise me! But what if you want to orientate yourself widely on a certain subject? And where you at the same time don’t want too many quality poor search results? Then web guides (or directories) are a better solution. There are two web guides where I occasionally take a look in: The Open Directory Project (ODP) and the Librarians' Internet Index (LLI).

There are big differences between both web guides. The ODP is in the possession of 5 million indexed sites, which is very big. This can be explained by the fact that thousands of volunteers all over the world are updating this index. Everybody has the opportunity to become an editor. Editors can judge and add applied websites.

On the contrary, the LLI is updated by a select group of librarians. Because of that, this web guide is much smaller then the ODP. An advantage of the LLI is that you are ensured that the provided content is of a good quality.

I’m a fan of both web guides. The ODP because of its big index and the LLI because of its high quality content.