Library information provider OCLC Research, US, has announced that the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for institutional repositories webinar recording is now available on the OCLC Research website. This webinar provided SEO techniques designed to improve the indexing ratios of institutional repositories in Google Scholar.
More emphasis is seen being placed on assessment and measurement of university outputs. Institutional repositories have the potential to increase citation rates of authors which, in turn, can affect university rankings. However, the possibility of doing so may be seriously diminished if institutional repository content is invisible to the large and growing number of researchers who use Google Scholar.
Because of this, Kenning Arlitsch and Patrick OBrien from the J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah conducted research on search engine optimization for digital repositories, with a special emphasis on institutional repositories (IRs). Part of the ‘Getting Found: Search Engine Optimization for Digital Repositories’ project funded by IMLS, this work has revealed technical and administrative reasons many institutional repositories have a low indexing ratio in Google Scholar.
Working with OCLC and Google Scholar, Arlitsch and OBrien implemented three pilot projects that reportedly led to the significant improvement of Google Scholar indexing of a sample set from the University of Utah's Institutional Repository, USpace. The resulting research paper, Invisible Institutional Repositories: Addressing the Low Indexing Ratios of IRs in Google Scholar, appears in the current issue of Library Hi Tech.
In this webinar, Arlitsch and OBrien provided an overview of their research and recommendations on how to improve the indexing ratios of institutional repositories in Google Scholar, including transforming metadata to Google Scholar-preferred schemas, based on what they accomplished with USpace.
This was the twelfth webinar in the OCLC Research Technical Advances for Innovation in Cultural Heritage Institutions (TAI CHI) Webinar Series. The series has been developed to highlight specific innovative applications, often locally developed, that libraries, museums and archives may find effective in their own environments, as well as to teach technical staff new technologies and skills. The webinar recording and slides are available on the OCLC Research website. It is also available in iTunes and on YouTube.
