"A centre of excellence in digital information management, providing advice and services to the library, information and cultural heritage communities."

UKOLN is based at the University of Bath.

About

Brian Kelly gave a 20 minute talk on Evidence, Impact, Value: Metrics for Understanding Personal and Institutional Use of the Social Web at a workshop on Digital Impacts: How to Measure and Understand the Usage and Impact of Digital Content which was held at the University of Oxford on 20^th May 2011.

Abstract

The Social Web can provide an important communications, collaboration and dissemination channel for a variety of professional and institutional activities. But how will individuals and institutions know if such channels are being used effectively and are providing a return on the investment? In the current political and economic funding environment there is increasingly a need to be able to provide evidence of the impact and value of use of such services.

In this talk Brian Kelly will describe recently surveys of use of various Social Web services, including both personal and institutional use of such services, and will describe how such surveys can be useful in identifying patterns of usage which can help to identify and inform appropriate best practices.

The talk will acknowledge that the sector is wary of use of metrics but will argue that the development of online services can be helped by using metrics to help understand how such services are being used within the sector as well as to be able to demonstrate value.

The talk will describe how although gathering evidence of usage and other metrics can be helpful in informing best practices, there is also a need to relate such evidence to the purposes of the services. The talk will conclude by describing how institutional dashboards could be used to relate usage to value and how this could relate to financial value.

Slides

Evidence, Impact, Value: Metrics for Understanding Personal and Institutional Use of the Social Web

[MS PowerPoint 97/2000 format]

Note that the slides are available on Slideshare and are also embedded below.

Also note that a blog post about this talk is available.

Biographical Details

Brian Kelly has been involved in Web development since January 1993, when he helped to established a Web site at the University of Leeds (one of the first institutional Web sites in the UK). Since 1996 Brian has been employed at UKOLN, a national centre of expertise in digital information management based at the University of Bath in the UK.

Brian makes active use of a variety of Social Web tools. If you would like to read more about his professional activities you can subscribe to the UK Web Focus blog which is available at http://ukwebfocus.wordpress.com/ or follow his Twitter account - briankelly.