[Web4lib] Library link list collections

[T Mac]

We have a committee that maintains a collection of a few hundred links, but they are very focused on difficult-to-find sites and information that are specific to our academic focus (aviation / aeronautics / aerospace). It's an extremely handy resource to refer students to, and we use it quite a lot ourselves when we are helping students with research. Our 'Recommended Websites' has averaged around 4500 hits per month over the past year. 
 
We store these in a simple little in-house, web-enabled database. We'd tried using del.icio.us at first because many of us are huge fans of del.icio.us for other purposes, but it didn't entirely do what we wanted it to for this database. For instance, the committee wanted to be able to easily look at the change history for an item (who edited / updated it, when, and why, for instance) and add notes that were only visible to the committee. This helps to avoid any confusion as to why links are added and removed - for instance, if a website was previously listed and removed because we found it was unreliable, we can still store a record of it so that it's not accidentally added again by someone else in the future even if the committee members change. 
 
Our little database also tracks usage statistics and search statistics (people can search the page titles and annotations if they don't want to browse through our categories). Seeing what search terms people are using is particularly useful to us in determining what types of sites we should add, and what types of keywords we should add with our annotations. 
 
We may eventually transfer this to another tool in the future, but for now it's very efficient and usable for both our students and the staff that maintain it. 
 
Terran McCanna
Electronic Services Librarian
Hunt Library
Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University