Hi Lars,
On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 7:09 AM, Lars Aronsson <lars(a)aronsson.se> wrote:
Do we know to what degree archives and libraries
succeed
to actually benefit from an increased web audience?
I'm trying to understand Swedish archives and libraries.
Some of them measure web traffic, but none seems to
care if the numbers are large or small. It's not like a
revenue stream to them.
You ask a good question. It's true, most libraries, archives and
museums do not see additional ad-click revenue or anything like that
as a result of increased Web traffic from Wikipedia. The most they
stand to gain in this regard is increased google juice, as more
inbound links can (theoretically) improve their relevance ranking in
PageRanked search engines. I think this is the primary reason why they
ought not to be seen as a spam threat by Wikipedia.
But libraries, archives and museums do need to be able to demonstrate
that the effort that they are putting into making collections
available online is resulting in an increased audience for those
materials. Like WIkipedia the mission of most cultural heritage
organizations is oriented around the spread of knowledge, and access
to resources that support knowledge creation and sharing. Increasingly
GLAMs recognize that rather than requiring researchers to visit their
physical building to access materials, they can put them on the Web
where the content is accessible by a global audience. Online access
can also drive actual physical visits, where online access to the
material is not sufficient.
As you know, there is a cost to putting content online (digitization,
storage, bandwidth, software development). If money and time spent
putting content online, but it is done in such a way that the content
is not used, it does not bode well for future digitization efforts. In
a way, web traffic is similar to more traditional metrics such as
measuring foot traffic in/out of the building, or counting types of
reference questions. These metrics provide a rough indicator of the
use of collections and services over time. They often can provide
indicators of what collections are of more interest to visitors, which
can even help guide future collection development and digitization
efforts. They also figure prominently in annual reports that are used
by funding bodies to evaluate their investments. In your work with
Swedish archives and libraries I would encourage you to try to
understand what metrics those organizations *do* currently care about,
and trying to expand the scope of those metrics to include Web
traffic.
I think some GLAMs have done such a poor job of putting content online
that they haven't been interested in Web traffic, because they looked
at it once and were so disappointed. Sometimes this disappointment can
lead to aborting digitization efforts altogether. Part of the reason
why I built Linkypedia, was to show the Library of Congress that their
(ancient and practically abandoned) American Memory website was
actually used on Wikipedia quite a bit, almost every day [1]. I think
many GLAM organizations are still in the middle of figuring out how
the Web changes their organizational goals and overarching mission. I
am personally hopeful that GLAMs are seeing that making the Web a
better place for research, and building connections to similarly
aligned resources like Wikipedia is a key part of their continued
relevance and mission. Like Wikipedia, and unlike other market driven
areas of the Web, GLAMs have a vested interest in persistent and open
access to the stuff that makes knowledge grow.
//Ed
[1]
http://linkypedia.inkdroid.org/websites/2/pages/?page=1&order=update&am…