Using popular websites to reach broader audiences

Ensuring you get the most out of popular web destinations can contribute to institutional strategies to:

Enhance reputation

Reputation for research, learning, teaching and more broadly as an institution is developed on a number of fronts ranging from impact measures to astute marketing and publicity. Most would agree that high profile collections can play a part in that mix, demonstrating scholarly tradition, worthy investment and learning opportunity, especially in the humanities.

Digitised content can make a strong contribution to these objectives by

• Making the institution collections richly visible to the widest audience online
• Providing a vehicle for widely resonant press releases and associated social media
• Generating exposure through use in A-level teaching

Improve efficiency and effectiveness

The strategic outcomes of digitisation can alternatively be described in terms of economy, efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery. This is particularly evident in the cases of learning and teaching and of research, where digitisation brings opportunities for greater effectiveness (personalisation, collaboration, etc) as well as saving time and money.

The cases for efficiency and effectiveness can be assessed by comparing current practice (for example in curation, learning and research). However, it is important to beware of overstating economic benefits as the costs of digitisation are highly variable and may be set against zero cost (though less effective) alternatives.

Contribute to widening participation activities

Universities are strategically committed to widening participation across social and economic groupings in higher education for all levels (undergraduate degrees, postgraduate studies, continuing and professional education) and regardless of mode (ranging from full time to distance education and MOOCs).

Digitised content can make a strong contribution to these objectives by

• Showcasing attractive and original learning and research content to prospective students
• Enabling re-use, thus adding value to educational resources, not only for university use but also for schools and colleges
• Social media amplification that brings original digitised content to the attention of key interest groups, such as A level teachers or local interest groups

Ensure economy of access

Alongside memory institutions, universities recognise the importance of providing access to unique texts and other assets of scholarly significance held in their special collections. However, supporting physical access is costly and inefficient for all parties. Whilst principally of interest to researchers in the institution, in the wider HE community and beyond, the potential for these assets to enrich the learning and teaching experience is increasingly recognised, especially if they can be readily accessed in digital form.

Digitised content can make a strong contribution to these objectives by

• Alleviating pressures on curators to accommodate visiting scholars
• Saving visiting costs to the researcher or student, with resulting environmental benefits
• Opening up resources to students who would be unlikely to access the originals
   

The global pandemic of 2020-2021 showed how digital access to collections can suddenly and unexpectedly become essential when onsite access for users is not possible for some reason.

Ensuring you get the most out of popular web destinations will help those who:

Use a general web service to find content

Research shows that most undergraduate students make use of well-known web-based services as a key part of their discovery behaviour. The most-used service is Wikipedia, although others such as YouTube and Flickr are mentioned for appropriate disciplines. Many students will go no further, though some will go on to cite, and some of those to visit, any references the service lists. Literature reports that teachers may also use Wikipedia, primarily to see what their students are finding. Graduate students and researchers may sometimes use Wikipedia for a quick introduction to a new topic.

Use a Google services (Scholar, Books etc) to find content

Faculty researchers not only use a general search engine to find papers and books, but will often use specialist services such as Google Scholar and Google Books as the starting point for keyword searches or for citation analyses. Advanced undergraduate and graduate students are also reported as using these services as one method of discovery. Some students report that book previews in Google Books can be sufficient for them to feel no need to seek out the full volume.

Use online social tools to find content

Students and researchers use online social tools to form peer communities in which information on resources will be exchanged. Most used are e-mail lists, writing personal and shared blogs, and tracking relevant blogs, often through RSS feeds. A few report use of Twitter for this purpose, but Facebook is not mentioned. Students are more likely to use social media such as Twitter and Facebook as a way of sharing resources where this forms part of the way they keep in touch with peers and classmates.

In 2018 Jisc commissioned Sero HE to interview academics who were actively engaging with digital archival collection in learning, teaching and research.

From embedding digital archival collections into the curriculum, to creating open educational resources to support students and researchers, to using digital tools to help students develop better skills of reflection analysis and evaluation, these case studies demonstrate the variety and depth of interaction with digital media in both undergraduate and postgraduate studies in the United Kingdom.

See the list of case studies.

Since the launch of this guide in 2014, Jisc has worked with UK higher education academics and librarians to highlight resource discovery and the use of digital collections.

The audio and written case studies created between 2014 and 2017 provide valuable insights into the methods used by academics and librarians to showcase digital collections.

See the list of case studies.

• The University of Birmingham has published their 'special collections' of images on Flickr, delivering over 2 million views since they launched in 2012
• The Imperial War Museum publishes images from its digital collection on HistoryPin, allowing users to find the location of the images on a map

A simple measure would be to calculate the audiences you are able to reach and are actually reaching through the services you have chosen to use. Many websites provide usage statistics which make it easy to see how many people have engaged with your content.

There are a number of tools that will allow you to effectively use web analytics to understand changes in traffic to your site as a result of republishing content on popular web services:

• Get started with Google Analytics Academy Courses
• Introduction to Google Analytics Segments
   

Other resources that might help you measure the impact of republishing your content include:

• Explore Twitter analytics
• Culture24’s Social Media Framework

Skills and knowledge required

• Expertise in the subject matter or curation experience
• Knowledge of rights and licensing
• Programming skills
• Experience of working with APIs

Cost

• £££££ - continuous investment required

Resources

• Create a Twitter Archiving Google Sheet (TAGS) to monitor Twitter search results
• Use NodeXL to analyse data from applications including Twitter, Flickr and YouTube
• Neatline visualises content from OMEKA collections
• Google Charts offers multiple options to visualise data
• VisualEyes creates timelines and visualisations from content such as maps and images
• The Internet Project from Pew Research provides a variety of reports on webtrends including 'Social media use in 2021'
• The Digital Engagement Framework provides advice and mechanisms to effectively engage with your audiences
• Tag clouds are an easy way to quickly visualise data, such as Word Art

• Images from Europeana have been added to Wikimedia Commons, creating an easy way to view them as a collection and to see how they have been used in Wikimedia projects
• As part of a two-year Wikimedian in residence project at the National Library of Wales, over 12,000 images were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons
• The Smithsonian has created multiple categories in Wikimedia Commons for its museum and galleries

Wikimedia Commons provides a range of tools that will help you track the use of your items:

• On any resource page in Wikimedia Commons you can check its usage on Commons as well as on other wikis worldwide
• Wikipedia offers a variety of web statistics tools to track Wikipedia traffic. WikiShark tracks traffic and trends, updating data on an hourly basis
• The BaGLAMa tool counts monthly hits on images from different source organisations

Skills and knowledge required

• Knowledge of licensing
• Expertise in the subject matter or curation experience

Cost

• £££££ - occasional investment required

Resources

• Welcome from Wikimedia Commons
• Expert outreach from Wikimedia UK
• Studying the impact of digital collections with Wiki-Data
• Assessing impact of medium-sized institution digital cultural heritage on Wikimedia projects

• The University of Birmingham has published their 'special collection' of images on Flickr delivering over 2 million views since they launched in 2012
• With over 3.9m followers, the Tate instagram account highlights images from their collections and galleries

Many popular web services provide usage statistics. Where you are using popular websites to drive traffic back to items on your collection website, web analytics will help you track which services provide the most impact:

• Measuring the Impact of Digital Resources: the Balanced Value Impact Model from King's Digital Labs
• Introduction to Google Analytics Segments

Skills and knowledge required

• Expertise in the subject matter or curation experience
• Knowledge of marketing and audience segmentations

Cost

• £££££ - continuous investment required

Resources

• The Internet Project from Pew Research
• Digital Engagement in Culture, Heritage and the Arts from the Digital Engagement Framework

• The Ada Lovelace Day at Oxford University held a Wikipedia edit-a-thon in 2013 which improved the recording of women’s scientific achievement on the site. Since that time the Ada Lovelace Day events have grown into worldwide events, including the University of Edinburgh holding regular edit-a-thons 
• The Wellcome Collection runs a wide programme of events related to Wiki initiatives, including edit-a-thons

Wikipedia edit-a-thons are usually measured in terms of the number of articles enhanced, revised or produced.

In terms of your digital collection, you might access success by looking at the number of times your items are cited in Wikipedia articles, the number of your items used directly in articles, and traffic recorded from Wikipedia to your digital collection.

To measure traffic you might find the following resources useful:

• Measuring the Impact of Digital Resources: the Balanced Value Impact Model from King's Digital Labs.
• Introduction to Google Analytics Segments

Skills and knowledge required

• Expertise in the subject matter or curation experience

Cost

• £££££ - occasional investment required

Resources

• How to run an edit-a-thon by Wikipedia