Web visibility and impact of the National libraries in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

National libraries (NLs) play an important role not only in the preservation of the national heritage but also in the provision of information to a country’s population. It is therefore very important that, with the emergence of information and communication technologies such as the Internet, the libraries are not rendered useless. The paper explores the status of the libraries on the Web in terms of their visibility, impact and linkages by investigating their search traffic statistics using the Alexa search tool. Results indicate that almost half of the NLs in sub-Saharan Africa do not have their own websites; although the high impact and top search queries were subject/issue-oriented, some of the search queries were not subject-specific; and majority of the in-links emanated from Wikis as well as library-oriented websites. The study concludes that national libraries in sub-Saharan Africa are not widely visible on the Web while their impact on the Web is minimal. The use of social networking sites as a means of improving the Web visibility and impact of the libraries is recommended.