Hi Lars,

On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 7:09 AM, Lars Aronsson lars@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&...