Weaving a Web of Precious Materials: Hyperlinks to, from and between Some Special Collections Libraries.

by Belden, Diana M.

This paper examines the hyperlinks to, from and between 111 special collections libraries whose parent (university) libraries belong to the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). I collected inlinks using the Alta Vista search engine, and outlinks by hand. The resulting data was examined to determine outlink targets, and to test correlations between link counts and quality rankings, geographic proximity, and collection strengths. Most outlinks from these libraries go to universities, government agencies and commercial sites, usually to institutional or divisional home pages. Top outlinkers connect users to important sites, like the Library of Congress and the National Archives and Records Administration. ARL ranking of parent library shows a slight positive correlation with number of inlinks, but does not correlate with number of outlinks. Some geographic regions interlink more than others. Finally, these libraries could be linking to each other much more based on shared collection strengths.