Reverse Image Lookup: Assessing Digital Library Users and Reuses

Document Type

Article

Department or Administrative Unit

Library

Publication Date

2017

Abstract

Reverse image lookup technology was used to assess the users and reuses of images from the Library of Congress' Teaching with Primary Resources digital collection. After selecting 44 images for the study, researchers used Google Reverse Image Lookup to generate a dataset of over 1,400 URLs. Drawing upon a coding rubric designed for a previous study on the ultimate uses of digital library materials, researchers coded the data to identify who uses these images and for what purposes. They found that the most popular type of user was “personal,” which aligns with previous work and indicates that a pattern is emerging between ultimate use and the personal user type. Additionally, the study's results indicate that social media and popular culture research outnumbered any other type of reuse. This article introduces reverse image lookup as a viable and approachable tool for digital library assessment, and discusses its implications for assessment and content selection.

Comments

This article was originally published in Journal of Web Librarianship. The full-text article from the publisher can be found here.

Due to copyright restrictions, this article is not available for free download from ScholarWorks @ CWU.

Journal

Journal of Web Librarianship

Link to Full Text

Share

COinS