our top 3

In his recent column in American Libraries ("I'm Sorry, You're Out"), Joe Janes reported back on an exercise where he asked librarians to pick only three websites to answer reference questions, and all search engines plus Wikipedia are off-limits. He put it,

Google buys every major search tool and is then shut down as a monopoly, and in the same week Wikipedia goes bankrupt. Choose three freely available websites as the best starting points for the widest possible range of inquiries.

He found that the most celebrated answers involved "something bibliographic ... something encyclopedic ... and a natively web-based tool".

I decided to see how that idea stacked up with websites we have sent to patrons, since sometime in 2006. The top three sites, not counting search engines or Wikipedia were:

1. http://catalog.multcolib.org (something bibliographic)
2. http://www.multcolib.org (a natively web-based tool - lots of links to great content under 'Topics' and 'Homework Center')
3. http://www.oregon.gov (something encyclopedic)

Here also is the full list.