Neuroscience
NiemanLab is trying an experiment: in a blog post called Share your data! Tell us how your readers arrive at your site: search, social media, the front door?, they are asking readers to do just that. Joshua Benton states what libraries know, that there is a lot to be learned from sharing information (his actual quote: "there’s lots to be learned from seeing how one site’s audience compares to another’s.") and asked readers who run a news website to post answers to 4 questions:
I'd love to see similar data for libraries! I recently attended Paul Signorelli and Char Booth's ALA TechSource webcast on the Role of Web Analytics in the Library (post-class post and discussion) and am looking more carefully at my data.
I was initially very surprised to see that about 29% of my website's traffic comes from Google. But after knowing that and watching students navigate to my website during reference encounters, I see that instead of bookmarking the page, they just Google "park library jomc" or a variation. Mystery solved.
My challenge to you: read Benson's post, and then come back & post your library's analytic data. Respond to these questions, for the last 30 days:
- My Summer Vacation
It's definitely summer here in North Carolina: we've had 36 days with temperatures at or above 90º in June or July (in 1952, we had 45 such days in June or July, says the News & Observer), and things are hot & sticky down south! It's...
- Library & Information Science Blog Posts
So I got an iPod Touch a few weeks ago, and it's swell. I love having the Internet anywhere in the house or at work, and this makes it much easier to keep up with blogs. Yay! Google Reader has a terrific mobile interface, which makes the blog posts...
- Code4lib Thoughts (secondhand)
One of my favorite programmers (ProgrammerGuy) went to the Code4Lib conference & gave us an update on some of the interesting things he saw / heard / thought about while there. Here are three of the things that most interested me from his talk. 1. LibraryFind...
- Google Answers -- So Do Librarians
Last week, American Public Media's Future Tense had a show on Google Answers (hear in RealAudio. The blurb on their site says: "Would you be surprised to learn that Google employs a stable of freelance researchers who answer questions for a fee? Google...
- Taxonomies Of Animals
Fabulous taxonomy / English-Latin name translator site for the Animal, Plant, Fungal, and 2 more kingdoms from the US Dept of Agriculture. ITIS, the Integrated Taxonomic Information System, lets you search by common name or scientific name of just about...
Neuroscience
Share Your Data!
NiemanLab is trying an experiment: in a blog post called Share your data! Tell us how your readers arrive at your site: search, social media, the front door?, they are asking readers to do just that. Joshua Benton states what libraries know, that there is a lot to be learned from sharing information (his actual quote: "there’s lots to be learned from seeing how one site’s audience compares to another’s.") and asked readers who run a news website to post answers to 4 questions:
- What percentage of your traffic comes from search engines?
- What percentage of your traffic comes from facebook.com?
- What percentage of your traffic comes from twitter.com?
- What percentage of your site’s visits begin on your front page?
I'd love to see similar data for libraries! I recently attended Paul Signorelli and Char Booth's ALA TechSource webcast on the Role of Web Analytics in the Library (post-class post and discussion) and am looking more carefully at my data.
I was initially very surprised to see that about 29% of my website's traffic comes from Google. But after knowing that and watching students navigate to my website during reference encounters, I see that instead of bookmarking the page, they just Google "park library jomc" or a variation. Mystery solved.
My challenge to you: read Benson's post, and then come back & post your library's analytic data. Respond to these questions, for the last 30 days:
- How do people get to your website & in what %? (This is called "Traffic Sources Overview" in Google Analytics.)
- Top 2-3 search terms to used in search to get to you.
- What are your top 2-3 pages?
- My Summer Vacation
It's definitely summer here in North Carolina: we've had 36 days with temperatures at or above 90º in June or July (in 1952, we had 45 such days in June or July, says the News & Observer), and things are hot & sticky down south! It's...
- Library & Information Science Blog Posts
So I got an iPod Touch a few weeks ago, and it's swell. I love having the Internet anywhere in the house or at work, and this makes it much easier to keep up with blogs. Yay! Google Reader has a terrific mobile interface, which makes the blog posts...
- Code4lib Thoughts (secondhand)
One of my favorite programmers (ProgrammerGuy) went to the Code4Lib conference & gave us an update on some of the interesting things he saw / heard / thought about while there. Here are three of the things that most interested me from his talk. 1. LibraryFind...
- Google Answers -- So Do Librarians
Last week, American Public Media's Future Tense had a show on Google Answers (hear in RealAudio. The blurb on their site says: "Would you be surprised to learn that Google employs a stable of freelance researchers who answer questions for a fee? Google...
- Taxonomies Of Animals
Fabulous taxonomy / English-Latin name translator site for the Animal, Plant, Fungal, and 2 more kingdoms from the US Dept of Agriculture. ITIS, the Integrated Taxonomic Information System, lets you search by common name or scientific name of just about...