bibliographic wilderness’s readers

Thanks to the 105 people who responded to my short readers survey. Much appreciated.

Google Docs gives me a nice summary with pie charts and stuff of the responses, but there’s no good way to share it with anyone! Due it being so javascripty, I couldn’t even manage to print it to PDF. I’ll try to paste it in below in case anyone cares, and in case anyone cares you can also see the full results in a spreadsheet here.

My thoughts

I’m aware that my ‘sampling methodology’ (or lack thereof) will over-sample people who read my blog more. But I’m still gratified to see I have some regular readers. Thanks, readers!

I was surprised that so many people use their own individual RSS readers to read the blog, maybe because I don’t actually use an RSS reader myself (believe it or not), but just use Planet Code4Lib. Hardly anyone actually goes straight to the HTML website.

I’m pleased to see I have a number of catalogers as readers, welcome.

I’m also pleased that there doesn’t seem to be a huge demand for topic-specific RSS/Atom feeds or categories, since I didn’t really want to maintain those. I actually used to try and do that, but got lazy and fell out of the habit. Looks like I’ll probably remain out of the habit.

Results Summary

How often do you review Bibliographic Wilderness?

Unfailingly at least look at the title of nearly every post		73	71%
Occasionally		29	28%
Only once in a rare while (or only once ever!)		1	1%

How do you read the blog?

Planet Code4Lib aggregator		10	10%
Planet Cataloging aggregator		24	23%
Other ‘curated’ planet-style aggregator		0	0%
Your own RSS/Atom feed software (where you pick what feeds go in)		59	56%
Just the HTML website		8	8%
Other		4	4%

What is your job that brings you to Bibliographic Wilderness

Systems or IT job in a library		28	27%
Cataloging or Technical Services job in a library		37	35%
Reference or public services job in a library		12	11%
Work for a vendor that sells to libraries (inc. OCLC)		4	4%
Other library sector job		7	7%
Non-library sector IT/programming job		0	0%
Other		17	16%

Would you like specific topical feeds or categories in the blog?

Absolutely, I’d read the blog much more with that (or might stop reading it entirely without!)		2	2%
It would be nice		40	40%
Wouldn’t be of use to me at all		59	58%