Content Analysis of Google Alerts for Cultural Heritage Institutions

ABSTRACT

This article outlines evidence-based methods for cultural heritage institutions to look for news and mentions about their collections and services online. Google Alerts were created for repository names, websites, and finding aid websites for 66 institutions randomly selected from the Archive Grid database. Results were analyzed to determine Google Alerts' accuracy, what types of institutions would benefit most from using Google Alerts, what the content of the sources found by the alerts was, what types of publications returned the most results, and if Google Alerts could also identify image reuse. While Google Alerts' accuracy for returning usable results for analysis was not very high, the structure of alert e-mails makes discarding irrelevant results simple and quick. Mid- to large-sized museums and institutions staging frequent exhibits and events, as well as those with active collections, return the largest number of alerts. News publications and social media publish the most content related to cultural heritage institutions. Though the sample set was small, Google Alerts also was able to identify image reuse.

KEYWORDS:

• archives
• assessment
• content analysis
• cultural heritage institutions
• Google Analytics
• libraries
• museums
• reuse

About the author

Elizabeth Joan Kelly, Associate Professor, is Digital Programs Coordinator at the Loyola University New Orleans Monroe Library where she provides leadership and vision in digital collections and preservation, digital scholarship, scholarly communications, and library web services. Kelly publishes and presents on archives, digital library assessment, and library pedagogy, and is co-founder and co-chair of the Digital Library Federation Digital Library Pedagogy group.

Notes

¹⁰ http://microsites.oii.ox.ac.uk/tidsr/kb/webometrics

1. https://beta.worldcat.org/archivegrid

2. See Chapman and colleagues (2015) for a comprehensive analysis of digital library reuse literature as of 2015.

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4. http://killedbypolice.net

5. http://microsites.oii.ox.ac.uk/tidsr

6. https://www2.archivists.org/groups/saa-acrlrbms-joint-task-force-on-public-services-metrics/final-version-of-standard-submitted-

7. http://oac.cdlib.org

8. http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/advancedsearch?_collection=oasis

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