Tim Spalding wrote:
> 2. WorldCat is seldom visited. For example, WorldCat has HALF the
> traffic of LibraryThing. It even has less traffic than Dogster.com,
> the social network for people who REALLY love their dogs.
>
>
>
It turns out that WorldCat gets less traffic than Open Library, which is
still in beta. This surprised me, but your data confirms that WC gets
little use. (And note that Open Library has links to WC for "find in a
library" so it sends some traffic to WC.) Yet the whole thing behind
OCLC's defense of WC is that it will be used to drive traffic to libraries.
There's obviously lots of interest in books, and very active
book-related sites, but it seems that there is little interest in going
to libraries to get those books. What if "libraries" looked like
LibraryThing to the user? (Or GoodReads... or BookMooch...) If libraries
were a mashable, social, online interaction that just happened to link
to items in the local catalog? Or is it that the library is just a big,
dull institution that people can't related to?
kc
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Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net
ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet
fx.: 510-848-3913
mo.: 510-435-8234
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Received on Fri Oct 23 2009 - 10:54:31 EDT