Web Log Analysis - Finding References From Multiple Domains

Transcription

1 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, , , , , C. Madsen page 1 of 7 17 March 2009

2 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. C. Madsen page 2 of 7 17 March 2009

3 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, eresources, or searching on the project name will reveal links from library pages. C. Madsen page 3 of 7 17 March 2009

4 Figure 2: Examples of Links from Library Web Sites C. Madsen page 4 of 7 17 March 2009

5 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 ( 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 3: Duplicate Domains Next, copy the two hundred sites highlighted to a word processing programme. Using the find and replace function of your word processor, search for the same top-level domains (.ac.uk and.edu) and phrases (lib or libr) that we looked for above. Find each of these strings with the programme and replace it with identical text, only highlighted or bolded. This will make it easier to scan the list for relevant entries (see Figure 4). C. Madsen page 5 of 7 17 March 2009

6 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 Figure 5: Link from a page at Open University used for a course C. Madsen page 6 of 7 17 March 2009

7 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 19 th 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 2 are links from departments recommending sites to their students C. Madsen page 7 of 7 17 March 2009