If you are running a quality directory, google approves of people submitting to you! Google made a statement about submitting to web directories and here is the exact quote:

Directory entries are often mentioned as another way to promote young sites in the Google index. There are great, topical directories that add value to the Internet. But there are not many of them in proportion to those of lower quality. If you decide to submit your site to a directory, make sure it's on topic, moderated, and well structured. Mass submissions, which are sometimes offered as a quick work-around SEO method, are mostly useless and not likely to serve your purposes. _[link]

Submitting to a quality directory has its SEO benefits, while just submitting your site to link farms, or directories that accept poor quality sites, is waste of time. Here are a few baseline reasons as to why our directory can be classed as quality. 

• We moderate the anchor text of titles
• We moderate the description and even rewrite them after review of the site
• If the site titles & descriptions don't match the content of the site, it is rejected outright
  
• We add our own quality links to the site and don't just depend on submitters
• We ensure links are placed in the correct categories, and don't let submitters put everything in the top categories
• When people submit payment for "review" of their site, that does not mean they automatically get accepted.
• We carry out periodic checks on existing links and delete parked pages, malware containing pages and other non-relevant links

There is a discussion on Webmaster World about this too. _[link]