MAR 7

OCLC Research Library Partnership meeting—London, England

The OCLC Research Library Partnership was pleased to hold a meeting immediately prior to the RLUK Conference 2017.

This event has passed.

The focus for this meeting was how libraries can best represent their collections, services and organizations on the open web. Presentations featured current OCLC work, in addition to highlighting the contributions being made by RLP institutions. This was also an opportunity to share what’s forthcoming from OCLC Research and to learn from our UK / European colleagues how OCLC RLP can best provide our support and assistance. 

Agenda

Welcome

Wikipedia and Libraries: Strengthening the Information Landscape

Leading up to and through the 20th century, users went to the library as a reliable source of information and knowledge. Today, users search Wikipedia and Google and find a great deal of content, but with less assurance about the quality and veracity of that information.

Wikipedia provides a framework to assess whether Wikipedia articles are supported by quality sources and have been verified as accurate, neutral and complete. In the English language, only a relative handful fully meet these standards. Libraries have the authoritative materials and librarians have the reference expertise to help close this gap.

This session included an update on what OCLC has been doing to help and encourage libraries in this area. We will also heard from a member of the Wikimedia UK staff about what institutions in the UK have done to contribute to Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and Wikidata and about work being done at the Wellcome Library.

SEO to SWI: Improving the Visibility of Libraries and their Collections
Kenning Arlitsch, Montana State University

Library collections, including institutional repositories, are often hidden from Internet search engine results because libraries fail to practice effective Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategies and tactics. As the Semantic Web emphasizes entities and their relationships, a new threat to visibility is emerging as libraries find themselves (and their services) poorly understood by search engines.

Your organization achieves Semantic Web Identity (SWI) when search engines recognize it as an entity. The display of a Knowledge Graph Card in Google search results for an academic organization is an indicator of SWI; Google has gathered enough verifiable facts to recognize the organization as an entity. Such recognition may improve the accuracy and relevancy of Google’s referrals.

Together we’ll consider why libraries struggle to develop successful SEO strategies and tactics (for example, SWI is poor for leading American research libraries). The good news is, there are tremendous opportunities for librarians to populate appropriate Linked Open Data (LOD) and proprietary Semantic Web knowledge bases.

Accurately Measuring Item Downloads from Institutional Repositories
Kenning Arlitsch, Montana State University

A primary impact metric for institutional repositories (IR) is item downloads, which are commonly measured through web analytics methods that fall into two categories: 1) page tagging analytics services (such as Google Analytics); and 2) log file analytics software.

Both methods have deficiencies that result in serious undercounting and over-counting problems, leaving IR managers unable to accurately report on item downloads. Evidence gathered for an IMLS-funded study by Montana State University, OCLC Research, ARL, and the University of New Mexico, shows that nearly 60% of all human-generated IR activity goes unreported by Google Analytics.

We will look at data from two studies, and a proposed new method for counting IR visitation and use. We will also look at a prototype web service developed by the research team (RAMP: Repository Analytics and Metrics Portal) that significantly improves the reporting relevancy and accuracy of IR performance metrics. (RAMP has similarities to IRUS UK, but approaches the problem from a different angle).

Registration is open to all in the OCLC Research Library Partnership and to special invited others. 

For more information contact Merrilee Proffitt or Rachel Frick.

 

 

 

 

 

Start Date

07 March 2017

End Date

08 March 2017