Improving Web Visibility: Into the Hands of Readers

Improving the visibility of library collections and services on the open web is one strategy to enhance the long-term viability of libraries. The tradition of modern librarianship has been to focus on the efficiency of library workflow systems, technical processing, and the accuracy of metadata against librarian-authored rules for metadata encoding. In this Library Technology Report, Fons discusses actions for libraries to take with regard to content exposure systems, vocabularies, content metadata regimes, and system design approaches that will serve the convenience of the end user and thereby contribute to the long-term viability of libraries. Fons covers such important topics as

renewing the focus on the reader to increase web visibility of library collections, services, data sets, and programs; understanding the basic mechanics of Google’s search engine to make informed decisions on how you can increase your library’s search results; understanding what services and offerings your users value most and why, and using that data to decide which content to promote on the web; exploring initiatives that libraries are taking to share data over the web, including Library of Congress’s BIBFRAME initiative; the BIBFLOW project, centered at University of California, Davis; Linked Data for Libraries and Linked Data for Production; and connecting the initiatives involving library data with common practices of web developers to improve discoverability in search engine results

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