phone vs Google apples vs oranges

If this is the only website you read, maybe you haven’t seen this yet. Phone vs. Google vs. Library, who is fastest? Of course, any librarian knows that the best thing to do is to call your librarian [who is at the library already] and then have her [or him] find the answer which might involve using Google but might not. What I want to see is a bunch of librarian superstars In the library, with IM and cel phones and Google and three cups of coffee and see which one of them is fastest given the same short list of tough questions. Now that’s a spectator sport. [thanks all]

another kind of web logs

Today the assistant director and I puzzled over the monthly web stats from our site trying to discern patterns and deduce meaning. I’m good with stats, but bad with ones that have been post-processed with tools I’m not super-knowledgeable about. As with many web tricks, I prefer to check the raw log files to answer questions like “Why are 2% of our hits going to the 404 page?” and “Are we just seeing an increase in hits because we finally made the library web site the home page on all library’s computers?” I encourage you to extract meaning from your web site statistics. Karen Coombs over at Library Web Chic has laid out some intro pointers on what to look for when you look at your logs.