1. 1 WebWatch: Monitoring Web Developments In The UK Brian KellyEmail UK Web Focus B.Kelly@ukoln.ac.uk UKOLN University of BathURL Bath, BA2 7AY http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/ UKOLN is funded by the British Library Research and Innovation Centre, the Joint Information Systems Committee of the Higher Education Funding Councils, as well as by project funding from the JISC’s Electronic Libraries Programme and the European Union. UKOLN also receives support from the University of Bath where it is based.

2. 2 Contents Presentation About WebWatch The WebWatch Robot WebWatch Trawls –UK Public Libraries –UK University Home Pages –Individual UK Universities WebWatch Futures Discussion Report Back

3. 3 About WebWatch WebWatch: One year post funded by British Library Research and Innovation Centre (BLRIC) Ian Peacock ( I.Peacock@ukoln.ac.uk ) appointed to post in August 1997 Aims to: –Develop and use robot software to analyse web technologies using within UK communities –Reports for institutions, funding bodies, etc on uptake of web technologies –Liaise closely with communities –Other related activities

4. 4 The WebWatch Robot WebWatch robot software: Originally based on Harvest indexing suite New modules developed in-house to overcome Harvest limitations Latest version written in Object-Oriented Perl Consists of: –About 1,200 lines of code for robot –Various utilities for processing and analysing results

5. 5 WebWatch Trawls The following WebWatch trawls have been carried out: Analysis of UK Public Library websites Analysis of UK Universities & Colleges home pages Analysis of eLib project pages Analyses of individual institutions

6. 6 UK Public Library Websites Initial Trawl: Carried out in 15 October 1997 Article published in LA Record Vol 12 (99) Main Findings: Public Library websites are small Significant numbers of misconfigured servers (e.g..gif files with text/html MIME type) See

7. 7 University Home Pages Trawl: Carried out in 24 October 1997 Article published in Ariadne No. 12 Additional report on hyperlinks to external resources published

8. 8 University Home Pages Nos. of links File size (HTML only) Findings: Normal(ish) distribution of file size Normal(ish) distribution for numbers of links on home page Variety of servers used

9. 9 University Home Pages Design Issues UK HEIs now have "small" number of links (only small number of exceptions) Server Issues Apache, CERN, NCSA and then Netscape servers most popular Should CERN and NCSA servers be replaced (for performance reasons)? Are institutions running little-used servers (WN, WebSite, …) in a vulnerable position?

10. 10 eLib Project Pages Trawl: Carried out in November 1997 Larger size of resource unearthed some bugs in software Not all resources trawled Main Findings: See

11. 11 eLib Project Pages Profiles differed for UK HEIs entry points Server usage Apache Entry Point File Size Nos. of HTML elements per page

12. 12 eLib Project Pages "New" technologies (XML, Java, …) did not appear to be used widely with the possible exception of Dublin Core metadata Use of Element Note - By March 1998 one institution was using Java on Institutional entry point

13. 13 WebWatch Futures Technical Finish object-oriented robot Develop relational database for storing data Develop web interface to provide (restricted) access to database TrawlUniv home pages  QueryFile size  Report Histogram Pie Chart  Histogram

14. 14 Institutional Trawls Trawls of institutions started recently. Will produce reports on: Website size Profiling of website Technologies used Quality (e.g. broken links, HTML conformance) Manual survey will complement robot survey

15. 15 WebWatch Futures (2) Reports Standardised reports Overall report Communities Aim to develop close links with communities: –University libraries –Information Gateways –Academic departments –Institutional web teams

16. 16 Your Feedback Your feedback to the WebWatch project is welcomed