Link attachment (preferential and otherwise) in contributor-run digital libraries

Abstract

Ibiblio is a digital library whose materials are submitted and maintained by volunteer contributors. We analyze the emergence of hyperlinked structures within the ibiblio collection. In the context of ibiblio, we analyze the suitability of Barabasi's model of preferential attachment to describe the distribution of incoming links. We find that the degree of maintainer activity for a given site (as measured by the voluntary development of descriptive metadata) is a stronger link count predictor for ibiblio than is a site's age, as the standard model predicts. Thus we argue that the efforts of ibiblio's contributors positively affect the popularity of their materials.