Yes, Martin's suggestion sounds more likely to attract, to me. For a fee I'd
expect some sort of augmented entry, some sort of blurb. e.g. it could be that
the basic entry is to the Dept and then you pay for links to individual courses
plus you can put a couple of paragraphs about yourself. You'd also expect the
info to be updated promptly when you asked, and probably expect to be prompted
to check your entry for accuracy annually.
Sheila
Quoting Martin De Saulles <[log in to unmask]>:
> I would be interested in paying (subject to approval from my head of school
> who holds the budget for such things). However, I would be interested in
> knowing more about the traffic that the site generates - more useful than
> hits is the number of unique visitors to the site. My main concern would be
> that not all departments would pay this fee and that the list would then not
> be so authoritative which would rather negate the value for those paying
> users. How about following a Yellow Pages model where everyone gets a free
> basic entry similar to the present situation but those who wish to pay an
> extra fee would receive a larger entry - possibly some kind of banner ad in
> addition to their normal text entry?
>
> Just a thought.
>
> Martin De Saulles
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Information and/or Library Studies in the UK
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Prof. Tom Wilson
> Sent: 13 July 2007 23:25
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: World list again..
>
> The World List... has been further expanded by the addition of a number of
> Latin
> American countries, details for which were kindly provided by Ian Johnson as
> a
> result of his 'Revistas' project
> (http://www.rgu.ac.uk/files/Latin%20American%20Library%20Schools%20v7.doc) -
> I
> still have to review the information for Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, where
> there are larger numbers of departments, but that will happen. I've also
> added
> one or two other countries myself and we now have a total of 92 countries
> and
> 586 institutions and I don't know how many departments and courses - perhaps
> someone would like to count them! Xenu reports that there are 2,864 links
> to
> check. I try to do that a couple of times a year and each time, some 30% of
> the
> links have changed and need to be removed or corrected.
>
> Which brings me to the question of maintenance. I regularly receive
> comments
> about the value of the list for curriculum development and/or research
> purposes, but maintenance is a key problem.
>
> This can be dealt with by charging universities in developing countries an
> annual fee for entry in the directory - perhaps by Department or School;
> this
> would provide a service to everyone and a free service to the developing
> world.
> Departments pay for entry in printed directories of courses, and something
> in
> the order of $250.00 or £125.00 per entry (i.e., whatever appears under the
> name of the department) would correspond favourably with the rates of
> printed
> directories - with the added advantage of a world-wide readership (28,000
> hits
> on the index page since last September); naturally, under this regime, if a
> university didn't wish to pay, it wouldn't get an entry.
>
> Does the community value the list sufficiently to pay for it?
>
> I'll be interested to hear the answer :-)
>
>
> Professor T.D. Wilson, PhD, Hon.PhD
> Publisher/Editor in Chief
> Information Research
> InformationR.net
> e-mail: [log in to unmask]
> Web site: http://InformationR.net/
> ___________________________________________________
>
--
Sheila Webber
Senior Lecturer, Department of Information Studies, University of Sheffield,
211 Portobello Street, Sheffield S1 4DP, UK
0114 222 2641
[log in to unmask]
The information literacy weblog - http://information-literacy.blogspot.com/
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