@AndySylvester First, thanks for the mention on directory/index building. It's encouraging to know somebody else is thinking about this stuff and reading along.
Second, I'm happy to see directories, in various guises, make a modest comeback. I'm also happy to see search engines with their own indexes starting up independent of Google, Bing and Yandex silos. I think it's important that both directories and a new bunch of crawling search engines move forward to help break the duopoly.
Last, You quite rightly mention "resource pages". I spend a lot of time thinking about that point where somebodies "links page" grew large enough and became categorized just enough to become a small directory. It's hard to describe but you know it when you see it and this is part of what i mean when I talk about various guises for directories.
@bradenslen you are welcome! I am trying to keep some momentum on this topic, looking for other good examples of indexes/resource pages.
@AndySylvester If it will help, I have directories some of which are really resource pages gone big. Also a list of specialized directories, like blog directories.