[OPLINTECH] Farewell ExploreOhio

[Stephen Hedges]

At the meeting of the OPLIN Board last Friday, it was decided that OPLIN
would no longer maintain the ExploreOhio website.

Use of the site has dwindled to just a few hits from libraries that link to
ExploreOhio from their websites. That's not really surprising, since
ExploreOhio, despite some nifty technology, is fundamentally a link
directory, a vestige of another time.

The original OPLIN website, which was built at about the same time Google
was invented, was a collection of link directories. How else could people
find anything on the internet in those early days? You don't remember the
original OPLIN website? Go to the bottom of
https://www.oplin.ohio.gov/content/oplin-website-through-years and you'll
see it. If you look closely, you'll see an icon on that first website for
"Discover Ohio"; in the beginning, Discover Ohio was the name for
ExploreOhio, until the Ohio Development Services Agency took the Discover
Ohio name for state tourism.

Link directories were replaced many years ago by search engines because it
was impossible for the people maintaining them to keep up with the
proliferation of websites. For quite a few years, OPLIN actually hired a
number of outside contractors to maintain the link directories. One by one,
those directories were dropped. ExploreOhio is the last of them.

OPLIN will keep the current ExploreOhio website up until June 30 of this
year. After that visitors to exploreohio.org will be re-directed to
ohioweblibrary.org.

Stephen Hedges
Director, Ohio Public Library Information Network
2323 W. Fifth Ave Suite 130, Columbus 43204
614-728-5250
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