Using Google Analytics Data to Expand Discovery and Use of Digital Archival Content

This article presents opportunities for the use of Google Analytics, a popular and freely available web analytics tool, to inform decision making for digital archivists managing online digital archives content. Emphasis is placed on the analysis of Google Analytics data to increase the visibility and discoverability of content. The article describes the use of Google Analytics to support fruitful digital outreach programs, to guide metadata creation for enhancing access, and to measure user demand to aid selection for digitization. Valuable reports, features, and tools in Google Analytics are identified and the use of these tools to gather meaningful data is explained

Using the Global Web as an Expertise Evidence Source

This paper describes the details of our participation in expert search task of the TREC 2007 Enterprise track. The presented study demonstrates the predicting potential of the expertise evidence that can be found outside of the organization. We discovered that combining the ranking built solely on the Enterprise data with the Global Web based ranking may produce significant increases in performance. However, our main goal was to explore whether this result can be further improved by using various quality measures to distinguish among web result items. While, indeed, it was beneficial to use some of these measures, especially those measuring relevance of URL strings and titles, it stayed unclear whether they are decisively important

University of Twente at the TREC 2008 Enterprise Track: using the Global Web as an expertise evidence source

This paper describes the details of our participation in expert search task of the TREC 2007 Enterprise track.\ud This is the fourth (and the last) year of TREC 2007 Enterprise Track and the second year the University of Twente (Database group) submitted runs for the expert nding task. In the methods that were used to produce these runs, we mostly rely on the predicting potential of those expertise evidence sources that are publicly available on the Global Web, but not hosted at the website of the organization under study (CSIRO). This paper describes the follow-up studies\ud complimentary to our recent research [8] that demonstrated how taking the web factor seriously signicantly improves the performance of expert nding in the enterprise

Enhanced Search for Educational Resources - A Perspective and a Prototype from ccLearn

Users of search tools who seek educational materials on the Internet are typically presented with either a web-scale search (e.g., Google or Yahoo) or a specialized, site-specific tool. The specialized search tools often rely upon custom data fields, such as user-entered ratings, to provide additional value. As currently designed, these systems are generally too labor intensive to manage and scale up beyond a single site or set of resources.However, custom (or structured) data of some form is necessary if search outcomes foreducational materials are to be improved. For example, design criteria and evaluative metrics are crucial attributes for educational resources, and these currently require human labeling and verification. Thus, one challenge is to design a search tool that capitalizes on available structured data (also called metadata) but is not crippled if the data are missing. This information should be amenable to repurposing by anyone, which means that it must be archived in a manner that can be discovered and leveraged easily.In this paper, we describe the extent to which DiscoverEd, a prototype developed by ccLearn, meets the design challenge of a scalable, enhanced search platform for educational resources. We then explore some of the key challenges regarding enhanced search for topic-specific Internet resources generally. We conclude by illustrating some possible future developments and third-party enhancements to the DiscoverEd prototype

The onus on us? Stage one in developing an i-Trust model for our users.

This article describes a Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC)-funded project, conducted by a cross-disciplinary team, examining trust in information resources in the web environment employing a literature review and online Delphi study with follow-up community consultation. The project aimed to try to explain how users assess or assert trust in their use of resources in the web environment; to examine how perceptions of trust influence the behavior of information users; and to consider whether ways of asserting trust in information resources could assist the development of information literacy. A trust model was developed from the analysis of the literature and discussed in the consultation. Elements comprising the i-Trust model include external factors, internal factors and user's cognitive state. This article gives a brief overview of the JISC funded project which has now produced the i-Trust model (Pickard et. al. 2010) and focuses on issues of particular relevance for information providers and practitioners

Optimising metadata to make high-value content more accessible to Google users

Purpose: This paper shows how information in digital collections that have been catalogued using high-quality metadata can be retrieved more easily by users of search engines such as Google. Methodology/approach: The research and proposals described arose from an investigation into the observed phenomenon that pages from the Glasgow Digital Library (gdl.cdlr.strath.ac.uk) were regularly appearing near the top of Google search results shortly after publication, without any deliberate effort to achieve this. The reasons for this phenomenon are now well understood and are described in the second part of the paper. The first part provides context with a review of the impact of Google and a summary of recent initiatives by commercial publishers to make their content more visible to search engines. Findings/practical implications: The literature research provides firm evidence of a trend amongst publishers to ensure that their online content is indexed by Google, in recognition of its popularity with Internet users. The practical research demonstrates how search engine accessibility can be compatible with use of established collection management principles and high-quality metadata. Originality/value: The concept of data shoogling is introduced, involving some simple techniques for metadata optimisation. Details of its practical application are given, to illustrate how those working in academic, cultural and public-sector organisations could make their digital collections more easily accessible via search engines, without compromising any existing standards and practices

Information Outlook, December 2006

Volume 10, Issue 12https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_io_2006/1011/thumbnail.jp