week 7 - collection development and link checking

I really enjoyed evaluating websites to add to the IPL collections. I was just disappointed in the lack of quality of a few of these websites.

For example, I evaluated the following website: http://www.fashionbrandsguide.com/
I couldn't understand why anyone would bother recommending it in the first place. All is does is offer sponsored search results. Users would be better off searching with Google.

I was also disappointed that the magazines I evaluated required subscriptions to access most of the material. Perhaps there was really useful information on these websites, but I will never find out.

Luckily, I did evaluate a couple of very high-quality websites, such as http://texashistory.unt.edu/
This website offers free online access to historical Texas materials from a large number of different archives, museums, and libraries. Full bibliographic information is given for each item and I was very impressed by the overall quality of the website. I think it would be very helpful for students, researchers, and anyone who is interested in historical materials.

Checking links was actually easier than I had anticipated. Most of the time, a simple Google search found the page and the new URL. It's a simple thing to fix, but it sure makes things a lot easier and a lot less frustrating for patrons!