Clock Ticking Down on Webby Nominees

The deadline is fast approaching to vote in the 2007 Webby Awards, the Internet equivalent of the Oscars. (Voting requires registration, to separate the “men from the bots.” “OK, bad joke.)” Fast, as in tomorrow (April 27).

The Library is nominated in two “People’s Voice” categories, which are decided by popular vote and will be announced May 1: Our overall site is nominated in the Government category, while our THOMAS subsite is nominated in the Law category.

I didn’t know it at the time, but in 2006 when the Library went to New York to accept its People’s Voice award in the Cultural Institutions category, I was also in attendance with my UNICEF colleagues as we picked up the People’s Voice award for Charitable Organizations Nonprofit.

The awards ceremony itself is a hoot, in that acceptance speeches are kept to a strict limit of five words.� You can accept with fewer words, but if you go over, you can prepare to be booed by the assembled audience.

I wrote last year’s UNICEF speech, which was by far the shortest of hundreds that I have written in my career: “Make us obsolete: Help children.”

And I believe the Library’s speech was a succinct and eloquent, “By the people, for people.”

If I might be permitted to repeat one of the best speeches in Webby history, it would have to be Al Gore in 2005, who said quite simply: “Please don’t recount this vote.”