Web Metrics for Library and Information Professionals
Library and information professionals increasingly need to create, manage, and monitor a wide range of online content, from a library’s social media account and web sites to the new and traditional research outputs that funders expect to be made available openly online. It is important that they understand the new opportunities that web metrics provide for measuring the impact of an individual or an organisation’s content. This book provides an up-to-date introduction to a wide range of web metrics, with practical examples of how they can be best put to use.
The book will begin with a wider discussion on the role of metrics, and how web metrics overlap with associated concepts with a longer library and information science history such as scientometrics and bibliometrics. It will explore the latest tools that are available, many of which have changed since the publication of the first edition, as well as how we can expect the field to change in the future with machine intelligence and artificial intelligence becoming more widely available.
This new edition has been extended and updated throughout to reflect the rapidly changing nature of the field. As well as updates to the user-friendly tools and resources, there is a greater emphasis on the programming libraries that are available, as library and information professionals are increasingly willing to start engaging with data that is available programmatically.
After reading the book the information professional will not only be better placed to adopt web metrics in their workplace, but also be critical of the misuse of web metrics.
David Stuart is an independent information professional, Bibliometrics Officer at the University of St Andrews and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Wolverhampton. He has published widely in in peer-reviewed academic journals and professional journals on information science, metrics, and semantic web technologies and is author of a number of books, including Practical Ontologies for Information Professionals (2016), Facilitating Access to the Web of Data (2011) and Practical Data Science for Information Professionals (2020).