I would treat your links page as a FAQ. In other words, at what sites do your librarians most frequently end up pointing people?

As others have said, local info is important.

Also, are your patrons going to need to go the Social Security website? How about filing for unemployment? Job searching (local newspaper or universal sites) and big local employer HR websites where people file applications links might be helpful as well.

Beyond local, try not to re-invent the wheel. Meta-sites are helpful here. Internet Public Library (http://www.ipl.org/), for example.

Unfortunately, small town library pages always seem to be idiot-friendly, because small town librarians seem to feel that the patrons are idiots. That's been the case in my library (I'm not one of the librarians, just so you know).If it's been made idiot-proofed- so that the IT people don't have to solve "problems" caused by those idiots who actually use the page, there's probably nothing you can do about it, because they've assumed you are one of the idiots. As a user, but not a programmer of library pages, I'd suggesst keeping the flashiness down to a minimum- not because it's idiot-friendly, but because it will be easier to keep up and sipler for everyone. Makke sure your catalog is complete and can be accessed from anywhere, and don't require a account number- especially if your library cards are 10+ digits. As for links - IRS and state tax pages, the homework help pages of your state library if applicable, links to larger libraies if they share your borrowing priviledges and link to interloan library requests. People are capable of putting through their own - in spite of the idiot your library may have that "does it for you".

The local teacher's union's website. Give them some love. :)

Area sights of interest? Local theater groups? Any summer fairs you can promote? Local rescue service or volunteer fire department?

This is kind of a tangent, but you might want to check with your local High School or University. If they have a web design class, you might be able to work with the teacher to have making your website (or a portion/framework) a project for one or some of the students.

As a children's librarian in the uk I run a website from home called www.childrensbooksequels.co.uk Many library authorities have links to it in the UK, New Zealand and the USA. It is also used a lot in schools as there are links to author's websites. I set it up originaly so I wouldn't have to remember the order of Unfortunate events and Harry Potter. The art of being a good librarian is not always knowing the answer but knowing where to find it. Good luck with seeting up the new pages.

A lot of large library systems have already done a lot of work you could link to in terms of finding useful websites. You could link to some of these, depending on subject areas you think would be useful to your patrons.

(Obviously you'd want to avoid sites that listed databases your patrons couldn't access or local resources that aren't local to you.)

Here's an example of what I'm thinking of. The King County Library System (where I'm a patron) selects websites that would be useful to students for their homework and organizes them by category: http://www.kcls.org/homework_help/index.cfm

I would look at other Library websites to get ideas. I also like aslum's answer; I would check with your local High School to see if you could get some help.