Archive for the ‘stats’ Category

Thursday, August 12th, 2010

Authors on the Cover of Time

Yesterday the New York Times reported that Jonathan Franzen was to become the first living writer to grace the cover of Time magazine since 2000, when Stephen King made it on. (Twain was on in 2008, but he was dead.)

So I wondered how often Time had featured authors in past. I came across Time’s handy index of covers, and made this graph, showing the 129 writers—dead and alive—Time has featured since 1923.

Here’s the chart, with a five-year moving average. As you might predict, it’s been a long, continuous fall.

Labels: stats

Wednesday, March 12th, 2008

LibraryThing for Libraries adds statistics

LibraryThing for Libraries now has stats! Libraries in the program can see just where LibraryThing for Libraries is working for them, and where it’s not. You can evaluate changes, and justify it to your bosses.

To see your statistics, go to the Stats tab. Statistics include:
  • Real-world coverage numbers and percentages for each enhancement
  • Recommendation and similar books link-usage
  • Tag popup and search usage
The tab itself is basic, but we included a link to download your statistics in CSV/Excel format. Pie charts? Go crazy.
Of course, statistics are a two-edged sword for us. Although overall rates are good, some libraries aren’t getting the best results. In general, if you’re hiding your enhancements behind a tab, you can expect much lower rates.

We certainly suspect that LibraryThing enhancements are getting a lot more play than some other browse links—like LCSH subjects—or those of our competitors’, who put their enhancements on external pages. Indeed, we’re wondering if libraries would like to use LTFL’s stats structure to track other links too?

LibraryThing for Libraries Email List. We’ve set up a Google Group for LibraryThing for Libraries customers. We hope member libraries will join up. We’ve sent out invites to all the primary contacts.

Sign up to have your voice heard. We will be talking about the future of LTFL and where it should go.

Labels: librarything for libraries, ltfl, new feature, stats