Progress report: period ending 4 April 2008
Actions and achievements
Presentation to Heads in Engineering.
Start of process to work with each faculty on an ideal ten year view - discipline librarians developing relevant data on use of libraries by faculty.
Meetings with Convocation and Melbourne University Bookshop.
Progressing papers for the next Steering Committee on benchmarks and planning assumptions.
Several days spent this week on the peak computer facility planning/engagement and IS-related business.
We’ve received our first formal submission to the Consultation Paper and our first response to the questionnaire. Next week will see the start of published responses being available on our web site.
An interesting paper on the impact of the Internet on future business models/ways of thinking – the preamble comments, "This super-distribution system has become the foundation of our economy and wealth. The instant reduplication of data, ideas, and media underpins all the major economic sectors in our economy, particularly those involved with exports — that is, those industries where the US has a competitive advantage. Our wealth sits upon a very large device that copies promiscuously and constantly."
Web usage statistics
Since Friday 29 February, the Consultation Paper has been downloaded 668 times from the ePrints repository:
- February: 59 downloads
- March: 556
- April: 53
Downloads came from 22 countries including:
- 275 downloads from Australia
- 268 from USA
- 18 from UK
- 13 from China
- 11 from Hong Kong
During March the main Information Futures Commission web site saw 1846 visits from 1594 individuals. This is slightly less than in February (3300 visits, 2900 individuals), probably due to the Easter break in mid-March.
Forty per cent of those visits were from people using computers connected to the University of Melbourne network (50 per cent in February).
Sources of visitors during March:
- referrals from other sites (61 per cent of visits, less than in February)
- direct (27 per cent of visits)
- public web search engines (11 per cent, slightly more than in February)
Referrals came mainly from two pages/sites:
- link on University home page (29 per cent of visits, down from 72 per cent in February)
- link from Information Services home page (10 per cent)
Just over 500 visits (27 per cent) were direct, not via links from other sites, suggesting that many people have bookmarked the Information Futures URL and revisit the site regularly.
Public web search engines sent us 208 visits in March. The top 5 search terms were:
- information futures commission
- information futures
- library of the future
- information futures forum
- unimelb information futures scholarly
The consistency of the keywords suggests that the name of the Commission is reasonably well-established in stakeholders' minds.
Top 10 most-viewed pages on the Information Futures Commission site in March:
- Consultation Paper (including how to make a submission), 727 views
- Home page, 667
- Information Futures Forum with Michael Geist, 206
- Information Futures Forum with Rhys Francis, 143
- Contact the project team, 112
- Key reference documents, 92
- Experts Panel, 86
- Index of Information Futures Forums, 80
- About the Commission, 74
- Project plan, 67
The prominence of the Consultation Paper and Information Futures Forums indicates that our publicity activities are reasonably effective at alerting stakeholders to new and important content on the site.
Video of the Michael Geist forum was viewed 101 times in March, probably a result of the presentation being rebroadcast by the campus radio station at Simon Fraser University in Canada.
In February 740 people collectively visited our blog 880 times. In March 666 people visited 748 times.
About two-thirds of March visitors were following links from the main Information Futures web site, a similar proportion to the February traffic. In March 196 visitors arrived at the blog via a Google search using one of 163 different search terms -- we seem to have a 'long tail' of unique keywords that appeal to many different audiences.
Forty-three per cent of the March visitors to the blog were using computers connected to the University of Melbourne network (64 per cent in February).
Most visitors looked at the blog's home page and browsed 1-2 other pages before leaving the blog. FAQs are a popular category of content, and the 'commentable' version of the Consultation Paper continues to attract interest -- though only 9 comments have been published on the blog overall.