Connecto ergo sum': a hyperlink analysis of national archives in the Eastern and Southern African regional branch on the International Council on Archives
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Date
2019
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Abstract
Lennart Björneborn’s famous tweet, ‘connecto ergo sum’, which means, ‘I
link, therefore I exist’, puts forward the intriguing dimension of the web as a
platform for link-based research, a major tenet of webometrics.
Webometrics, as discussed in this study, explored the web presence, web
visibility, web-impact and linkage of archival institutions in the ESARBICA
region; examining the types of institutions that provide links to archival
institutions in the ESARBICA region; establishing the links pointing to
national archival institutions in the ESARBICA region; and examining the
type of institutions that provide these links. Google Search engine and Alexa
metasearch engine were used to collect data. Additionally, the formulas
derived from the Statistical Cybermetrics Research Group (2016):
‘Impact=Inlinks/page’ and ‘site:Domain’ were used to collect data on the
impact and web pages linking to the archival institutions. The study was
underpinned by the Citation Analysis theory. Search engines, metasearch
engines and web content analysis were used to collect webometrics data from
ESARBICA archival websites. The findings of the study revealed that the
web-impact of ESARBICA archival institutions is generally low as evidenced
by the low impact factors attained. This may lead to the minimal usage of the
information on the websites, undermining the importance of archival
institutions. The low impact can be increased through such measures asredesigning websites to increase visibility, posting rich files on websites, and
interlinking the websites to key archival associations and institutions, among
others. Other findings showed that some websites were hosted by
institutions other than the archival institutions The impact results further
revealed that in the ESARBICA region, Southern Africa was more
represented with the archival institutions from six countries (Lesotho,
Malawi, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland and Zimbabwe), while the Eastern
African region had archival institutions from two countries (Kenya and
Tanzania). The findings further showed that not all archival websites attained
web presence in the form of accessible websites. The link classification
results revealed that the ESARBICA websites mostly attracted industry links
with extensions .com and .co as the most popular Top Level Domains
(TLD). A strong link relationship was noted between archival institutions
and research-based activities in universities, as well as evidence of openness
as archival institutions published documents with archives-related
discussions on Google Scholar. The study showed that ESARBICA archival
websites are not interactive in nature and have not yet embraced Web 2.0
tools on their archival websites. The implications of the study included that
archival institutions without websites might consider attaining web presence
through constructing websites, establishing link relationships by archival
institutions, and making efforts to avail more data to enhance web presence
in ranking. The study recommended that ESARBICA archival institutions
host standalone websites and establish links with archives related research
sites. The practical implications of the paper include: revealing the specific
ways in which archival institutions can conduct web-link assessments and
web-impact assessments, ways of interpreting results from web-impact
assessments and link-impact assessments, assessing alternative methods of
link counts.
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Phiri, C. et al (2019) Connecto ergo sum': a hyperlink analysis of national archives in the Eastern and Southern African regional branch on the International Council on Archives. ESARBICA Journal, v.38:157-189