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The Laws of the Web: Patterns in the Ecology of Information
The Laws of the Web: Patterns in the Ecology of Information
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Ibiblio is a digital library whose materials are submitted and maintained by volunteer contributors. This study analyzes the emergence of hyperlinke d 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 ofdescriptive 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 affectthe popularity of their materials.