To link, or not to link: Joyce M. Latham says web site selection must be backed up with the same sort of policies we use to define print collection development. (feature).

The World Wide Web may be a morass of information, but a library is making a value judgment when it identifies and selects sites it considers important and links to those sites from its own web page. In the same way selecting a book, video, CD, or magazine for inclusion in a library collection represents the recognition of some value to the users of that item, the act of selecting a web site also ascribes another level of value to that site. Traditional collection development is often shaped by an active documented policy reflecting the institution's values, however, the selection of web sites tends to be left to the staff members as a subjective judgment call.

In many cases that judgment call is perfectly valid. There are, after all, guidelines professionals use in evaluating web sites. But how do professionals explain the process of collecting web sites, of creating relationships among various sites relative to particular subjects? Why do they create the juxtapositions that they do? Which lists are regularly updated, and what collections languish once posted? How do professionals justify the costs of their collections, when we investigate the staff time, server time, and cataloging time involved in the process?

A legal defense

The Bettendorf Public Library, IA, created a link selection policy for its web site on the advice of the city attorney. Bettendorf was concerned that white supremacist groups active in the area would request a link from the library web site to its own. Without a policy, the library had no grounds by which to refuse a request for a link, and so the board passed a "Policy for Links" to the library web site in May 2001.

This is a common stimulus for any selection policy, in large part a defensive maneuver to thwart the strategies of special interest groups to, in effect, manipulate a practice to further their own ends. If the group is mainstream and innocuous, there is seldom a problem. If its views are marginal, the stage is set for fireworks.

The case of Putnam Pit v. City of Cookeville has highlighted the need to document the decision-making process by which links are added to governmental web sites. Geoffrey Davidian was the publisher of the Putnam Pit, a watchdog newspaper that monitored the government of the City of Cookeville, TN. Davidian had requested that the city provide a link from its web site to the web …