Most popular posts of 2011

2011 has been quite a year for the Darling Library News & Events Blog. In the fall of 2010 we intentionally set about to use the blog to increase awareness of the library's resources and to build community. Looking at the Yearly Statistics Summary Log below, our efforts to get people to the blog seem to have been successful. We have had an increase of unique visits of more than 240% over the previous year. (Based purely on a cookie, this is the total of the returning visits and first time visits - all our visitors.)

Our top ten most popular posts with a total of 1,489 unique page views (approximately 12% of our all time total of 12,028 since 2006) are as follows:

Four of the most popular posts of all time have been from our “What are you reading?” series, making up 32% of the top ten page views:

• What are you reading, Frank Scotti? (December 1, 2010) 147 page views
• What are you reading, Carol Davidson? (September 21, 2011) 137 page views
• What are you reading, Jim Woest? (November 9, 2011) 97 page views
• What are you reading, Blair Wilgus? (November 2, 2011) 94 page views

Two were informative posts about eBooks with 35% of the page views:

• E-Reference Works (September 21, 2010) 411 page views
• Ebook Economics (September 13, 2010) 108 page views

The Christmas Reading Lists both made the list with 14%:

• Christmas Reading List [2010] (December 7, 2010) 106 page views
• Christmas Reading List 2011 (December 13, 2011) 103 page views

And finally, oddly enough, 19% of the top ten page views were of actual news items:

• WMS is A-Live! (June 20, 2011) 191 page views
• Presidents Day Hours (February 17, 2011) 95 page views

This tells me four things:
1) The What are you reading? series is popular
2) Hope faculty, staff, and students are doing their part helping develop community by sharing their reading habits and interests with us.
3) People are interested in ebooks.
4) The Hope community is interested in librarian-recommended readings about Christmas.

It does not tell me whether our ultimate goal of raising awareness (and usage) of library resources has been achieved. Effectiveness in this area can best be measured by actual database usage statistics.


TOP TEN PAGE VIEWS for 2011
(in order of popularity):
1. E-Reference Works – 411
2. WMS is A-Live! - 191
3. What are you reading, Frank Scotti? - 147
4. What are you reading, Carol Davidson? - 137
5. Ebook Economics – 108
6. Christmas Reading List [2010] – 106
7. Christmas Reading List 2011 – 103
8. What are you reading, Jim Woest? - 97
9. Presidents Day Hours – 95
10. What are you reading, Blair Wilgus? - 94