Calculating web impact factor for university library websites in Sri Lanka

Abstract

This paper aims to explore a Revised Web Impact Factor (RWIF) for university library websites in Sri Lanka and the correlations between RWIF with external backlink and page count. The RWIFs were calculated by dividing external backlink counts by the number of pages found in Yahoo, and Google search engines and SEO CHAT application tool for each university library website at a given point in time. Collectively, 6,850 average web pages and 630 average external backlinks were found from studied university library websites. University of Moratuwa library website received the highest RWIF of 0.4415, which indicates that the number of externally linked pages to www.lib.mrt.ac.lk is much higher than that of other universities. It was found that external backlink count and RWIF were correlated and associated and it shown that there was very less difference between the external backlink count and RWIF. Research results found that there was no much association or closeness between page count and RWIF. The main factors that can raised RWIF of a university library website were linking of websites to their affiliate universities, university libraries, international websites, internet guides and search engines and making appropriate information resources, such as getting access to the university's electronic journals, library resources, the news, information from conferences available and easily accessible, and usable for its users audiences and as a result the website will receive more external backlinks. The findings of the study will guide to the librarians to evaluate the strength of their online presence of their library websites and plan to improve their status on the web.