I believe submitting your site to search engines is still a big help in boosting your SEO. Though some small search engines are not used for browsing, indexing your link in these search engines are still helpful than placing your site into dead directories. Here is the lists of free search engines.
You're welcome... though these are small search engines, still they can help add backlinks to your site.
You say they are small search engines - understood. And then you go on to say "still they can help add backlinks to your site". Are you trying to imply that by submitting to these search engines you tend to gain back links?