1. Using
web log analysis
to identify use of resources for
teaching and learning
Histpop
To find references from library or academic (syllabi, course resource lists, etc.) pages, the easiest way is to start from the ‘Referring Sites’ section of the extended web log files / reports.
For Histpop, for example, we can see that of the top 50 referring sites, 20 are on .edu or .ac.uk domains. (See Table 1)
Table 1. Referring Sites to Histpop: Site Visitors 1 No Referrer 77,712 2 http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk 10,919 3 http://www.histpop.org.uk 1,715 4 http://www.statistics.gov.uk 1,629 5 http://www.genuki.org.uk 1,195 6 http://www.familyrecords.gov.uk 850 7 http://histpop.org 726 8 http://en.wikipedia.org 614 9 http://homepages.gold.ac.uk 524 10 http://www.jisc.ac.uk 386 11 http://moodle.nuim.ie 257 12 http://www.theregister.co.uk 249 13 http://www.1911census.org.uk 238 14 http://library.open.ac.uk 220 15 http://www.rootschat.com 211 16 http://libweb.lancs.ac.uk 188 17 http://ahds.ac.uk 157 18 http://ilsapps 153 19 http://www.qub.ac.uk 137 20 http://www.lib.gla.ac.uk 136 21 http://www.ffhs.org.uk 130 22 http://eudocs.lib.byu.edu 127 23 http://blogs.ahds.ac.uk 115 24 http://www.data-archive.ac.uk 102 25 http://www.inf.aber.ac.uk 94
33 http://www.whois.sc 49 34 http://www.jiten.com 48 35 http://www.leighlife.com 47 36 http://www.boyd.harris.btinternet.co.uk 47 37 http://www.ncl.ac.uk 46 38 http://study.conted.ox.ac.uk 45 39 http://studentintranet.peterborough.ac.uk 43 40 http://theoracle 42 41 http://www.wordsun.co.uk 41 42 http://scout.wisc.edu 40 43 http://www.blackstump.com.au 39 44 http://www.galaxy.bedfordshire.gov.uk 39 45 http://histpop.org.uk 37 46 http://www.stumbleupon.com 37 47 http://www.sylviamilne.co.uk 36 48 http://librarianinblack.typepad.com 36 49 http://del.icio.us 33 50 http://philbradley.typepad.com 33 Subtotal 99,964
Looking more closely at the domains, we can see that of these twenty:
• 4 domains represent UK HE non-profits such as AHDS, JISC and the UK Data Archive
• 4 appear to be libraries as they have ‘lib’ somewhere in the domain • 2 are instances of learning / teaching platforms (1 is an instance of
Moodle, the other of Study)
From here, it is possible to dig further into these references by following some of the links and performing basic searches. Following the top .ac.uk site
(homepages.gold.ac.uk) and performing a basic search on the Goldsmiths homepage for “Historical Populations Reports” shows that Histpop is linked to from a page called “GENUKI” which contains genealogical resources for the UK and Ireland (See Fig. 1). If the link is not immediately obvious on the page you have navigated to, try going to ‘View Source’ in your browser and searching for the URL in the code.
Figure 1
Continuing down the list of referring sites, following the link to moodle.nuim.ie shows that a password is required to go any further. The same is true for the other teaching platform (study.conted.ox.ac.uk). Nonetheless, these links seem to imply the use of Histpop in a teaching context—as a recommended resource, or for an assignment.
Following the links from the domains that contain “lib” will often take you to a library home page. From here, following a link to ‘recommended resources’, ‘e-resources’, or searching on the project name will reveal links from library pages.
2. Using
inlink analysis
to identify use of resources for teaching
and learning
Archival Sounds
If log files aren’t available, similar tactics can be used to identify specific uses of a resource using an inlink tracking tool such as Yahoo! Site Explorer, although more labour is required.
Taking as an example the British Library Archival Sounds project
(http://sounds.bl.uk), Yahoo! Site Explorer can be used to generate a list of the first 1,000 inlinks (see the section on using Yahoo! Site Explorer under
webometrics). The first drawback to this method is that the inlinks are in no obvious order and are not ranked by frequency of referral as are reports
generated from extended log files. Open the tab-delimited file in a spreadsheet program and highlight the first two hundred sites in the list. Because this is a list of sites, not domains, there are frequent duplicates (see figure 3), so in order to get approximately 50 domains, a larger number of sites need to be selected than you might work with from processed web logs.
Figure 4: highlighting the top level domains and library references
Follow the relevant links—as above—looking for the content in which the link appears. One of the benefits of using inlink data rather than log files is that the link should take you directly to the page in which the link appears.
Summary of findings related to The British Library Archival Sounds Project
‐ 19 links from academic web sites (5 .edu and 14 .ac.uk)
‐ 8 links from academic library websites, primarily as part of a list of recommended e-resources
‐ 1 link from a page directly related to a course taught by Open University (See Figure 5)
‐ 31 links from blogs
Summary of findings related to Bopcris
‐ 42 references from academic web sites (13 .ac.uk, 1 .ac.in, 28 .edu) of which:
‐ 30 are references from academic library web sites
‐ 3 are references from a faculty member’s page of recommended sites Summary of findings related to Wellcome Project
‐ 22 reference from academic web sites (15 .ac.uk, 7 .edu) of which:
‐ 14 are references in regard to open access mandate supported by the Wellcome Trust (see Figure 6)
‐ 1 is a reference from an academic library web site
Figure 6: Open Access News article about the Wellcome Medical Journal Backfile Digitisation Project
Summary of findings related to the 19th C. British Library Newspapers project
‐ 19 references from academic web sites (14 .edu, 4 .ac.uk, 1 .ac.nz) of which:
‐ 14 are links from academic libraries
