DES 3005 - Web Design I
Week Three | Part One
Call Me Crazy
Here's an interesting piece of information from a library Web site. This table displays data tracking library usage over a five-year period. Let's examine it:
| Books and Periodicals | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | ||
| 215,307 | 202,719 | 195,726 | 183,624 | 188,855 | ||
| Non-Print Circulation | ||||||
| 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | ||
| 86,192 | 106,052 | 118,701 | 127,478 | 134,412 | ||
| Total Circulation | ||||||
| 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | ||
| 301,499 | 308,771 | 314,427 | 311,102 | 323,267 | ||
| Reference Questions | ||||||
| 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | ||
| 40,327 | 67,783 | 60,000 | 54,680 | 53,992 | ||
| PC & Internet Use | ||||||
| 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | ||
| 10,343 | 19,368 | 30,000 | 38,749 | 45,764 | ||
It seems borrowing of books and periodicals during this study dropped nearly 14%. Overall circulation was up by about 7%, thanks to the borrowing of non-book items like CDs and videotapes. PC and Internet usage was up, of course ... no surprise there.
It doesn't take much speculation to conclude that people borrow fewer books now, and that computer usage has something to do with that. People are still reading, it seems; maybe they just do more of it online.
Did you notice the trend in the number of reference questions? Strange how it spiked in 1999, then began to fall off in the following three years. What would cause that to happen?
Call me crazy, but I have a hunch: Google. Google was launched in 1998.
Before Google there was Yahoo, Ask, Dogpile, AOL, Lycos, HotBot, AltaVista, Archie and Veronica. Some of these search services are still in use, others are not.
What Google did was create a unique and proprietary algorithm that pulled it all together and brought the vast resources of the Web right to our virtual doorstep. This algorithm is now such a pervasive part of our culture we no longer search the Web, we Google it.
Please go to Week Three Part 2 »