March 18, 2009

Ten weeks of stats

Warning! Navel gazing ahead!

At the beginning of January, I did a longish post about the hit stats for the blog over 2008. It had been a good year as well as about 18 months since I'd last posted stats, so I thought it was a good time. I also favour transparency in such things; I appreciate it when others post their stats as I think it demystifies the whole "popularity" business.

Little did I know what the beginning of 2009 would bring.

Not that the rush has been that impressive -- I've gotten 19,113 pageviews so far this year compared to 73,212 for all of last year (26% of last year's total in 21% of the year so far, so a slight increase). It's how it's come.

So far this year, I've had my most popular post ever as well as my 6th most popular. That's since June 2006 when I started using Google Analytics. Before then, however, my traffic was only about 5-10% of what it is now so the data from then probably won't affect "all time" totals much.

So, what are those two posts?


  1. Twenty-nine reports about the future of academic libraries
  2. Tor.com & Globe and Mail Books: What can library websites learn


The Reports post has already become my most popular post ever by a fairly large margin. Let's take a look at the top 10, with total pageviews since June 2006 in brackets.
  1. Twenty-nine reports about the future of academic libraries (3,584)

  2. Best and worst science books (2,540)

  3. Jeff Healey (1,494)

  4. Interview with Timo Hannay, Head of Web Publishing, Nature Publishing Group (1,445)

  5. My Job in 10 Years: Collections: Further Thoughts on Abstracting & Indexing Databases (1,051)

  6. Tor.com & Globe and Mail Books: What can library websites learn (1,014)

  7. The life of a CS grad student (980)

  8. Best Science Books 2007: Library Journal (913)

  9. Giving good presentations using PowerPoint (860)

  10. GuruLib home library organizer (715)

Of course, the reason those two posts have become so popular so quickly is because they were both linked quite widely. The Reports post in particular got a lot of mentions all over the library and educational blogospheres. The Tor/Globe and Mail got a bit boost from a mention in AL Direct. Thanks to all!

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