Information Research Weblog

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?