Do Collaborative Multi-Institution Projects Drive End-User Traffic to Digital Collections?

Abstract

Many libraries participate in collaborative multi-institution digital collection projects because they promise to make it easier for end-users to find our materials. Creation and maintenance of these projects involves significant worker-hours, and participation often requires changes to collection metadata and software. But do these projects drive enough additional traffic to justify the extra work? This poster examines sources of end-user traffic for five digital collections during the 2015/16 academic year. Traffic to these collections from five collaborative projects is compared to traffic from other sources, such as university Web sites, Web search engines, and Google Scholar.