The aim of the Link Libraries is to provide links to resources elsewhere on the internet. There are two sorts of links:
- permanent links in the Main Links Library
- links to more ephemeral or lightweight material categorised as "Noted-in-passing"
Main Links Library
Links in the Main Links Library are assumed to have a long-term value and are assigned one of the following categories:
- Journal
- Online information resource
- Organisation
- Project
- Website (AT resource)
- Website (AT teacher)
- Website (other individual)
In addition, they can be tagged from multiple vocabularies, similar to Library Items in the Bibliography.
Books, journal articles and other content-rich media are excluded: they should appear in the Bibliography.
At the moment, the scope of the Link Library is intended to be English-language resources. This may be expanded in discussion with international Alexander societies.
Noted in passing
Links that are "noted in passing" are considered to be more ephemeral. They provide a way for Contributors to flag up interesting articles, blog posts, news stories etc of passing interest but which do not warrant detailed tagging and are not considered permanent or long-term resources. They are mainly for content, not for websites or organisations.
Links in the "noted-in-passing" library are categorised as follows:
- article
- blog post
- book
- miscellaneous
- news story
The associated records are very simple and are only tagged by broad "research area". The assumption is that interested ASO members will explore the links to the source material as they are notified of them (in the email digests of new content), rather than actively searching for them via one of the global search facilities. It is hoped that the relative ease of data entry will encourage more Contributors to create "noted-in-passing" links, feeding in titbits of passing interest to the other site users.