I've been working on this for a couple of months. I got the original idea when thinking about writing my next "Library Website of the Month", something I do periodically on my other site, ChicagoLibrarian.com.

I thought about how I was going to tackle this. Usually the hardest part was simply finding a candidate to review. Sure there were lists but the lists didn't tell me what was new or interesting. Ditto for search engines. Even figuring out what sites had been redesigned in the past 12 months -- something that basic -- was a painful process.

What I needed, it dawned on me, was something that went beyond a simple collection of links. That was important but equally as important was some kind of framework that allowed for greater context and added value.

What's more, I needed something that would take advantage of our current technology, particularly open-source software, so that it would be possible to play with the content and to allow others to participate in a way that formerly was unthinkable.

And the rest, as they say, is history. The site is built on the open-source content management system Drupal. Like all good projects it's a work-in-progress, or as they say nowadays, "permanent beta".