Thanks to Jim Moore over at Harvard for using the Open Irish Directory (see sidebar at left) to illustrate his ideas about the comeback of directories -
"Why are directories helpful? Frankly, they can be much more targeted and helpful than search engines, their structure is transparent, and complex sets of results can be ordered and made available in a practical manner. You can with relative ease traverse a directory tree down three or four or more levels. And we are now seeing cool directory-enhancing software like Grazr, which is specifically intended to facilitate “grazing” across levels of deep and rich trees. Trees are coming back."
Just to note that the Open Irish Directory is a distributed effort with voluteer node editors like Ken McGuire, Robin Blandford, Paul O'Mahony, Ciaran O'Gorman, Ed Byrne and Piaras Kelly all helping out (I'm sure I'm forgetting someone?). And we're always looking for new node editors so just email me or comment here if you'd like to get involved. By the way, there's an interesting debate on the need for directories going on over at the Enterprise Ireland message board too.
Jim really has been firing on all cylinders since he started writing his new 'book on OPML' -
"The web is changing once again. A new layer is developing. That layer is all about directories as a primary structure for organization access to web resources. It is about separating resource objects from structures. It is about having multiple structures pointing to the same resources. It is about the web as a layer of objects, “described” by outlines."
Thats a good reminder for me to refresh the Irish Film node and get some new listings in for 2007 :)
Posted by: Ken McGuire | December 18, 2006 at 11:50 AM