Visibility, Web Impact Factor, and Collaboration among LIS Schools in US

Websites of Library and Information Science (LIS) schools verified by ASA are openings to the virtual world in which invaluable information about faculty members, students, and experts of library and information science is presented. With regard to the significance of the websites of such schools, the present study attempts to evaluate their visibility, Web Impact Factor, and collaboration rate. Design/methodology/approach:The method used in this study is link analysis, a webometrics method. In this process, the in-links, self-links, and co-links of the websites under study were computed and then their Web Impact Factor was calculated. Afterwards, cluster analysis and multi-variate scaling were applied to evaluate the collaboration rate of the websites. The statistical universe of the study includes 29 websites, and the Yahoo search engine was used to analyze the links. The results indicated that the Michigan University website (with 141,000 in-links), Florida State University website (116,000), and Drexel University website (71,600) were the most visited websites. The Dominican University website (86), University of Missouri-Columbia website (73.4) and University of North Carolina Central website (26.9) were also shown to have the highest Revised Web Impact Factor. Co-link analysis results revealed that the websites under study had collaborated in six clusters from the standpoint of both cluster analysis and multivariate scaling. Website managers and designers need to improve their websites with regard to the results of studies like this one. The success of a website relies on factors such as content, size, language, and history. Therefore, studies conducted on this subject need to consider all of these factors together.