Thursday, August 16, 2007

100,000

I haven't been paying much attention to my sitemeter recently, and yesterday I passed a milestone almost without noticing it. At 2:07pm EST yesterday, the AL received its 100,000th hit, and about the 184,000th page view. It was very exciting. I had an extra martini to celebrate. I put in the sitemeter about 15 months ago, and I think 100,000 hits isn't bad for 15 months. It's not like I'm a commercial blogger or a hustler trying to make a professional reputation for myself.

To compare with last year about this time, I went back and checked, and last July I had 4,030 hits and 8,730 page views. This past July I had 11,495 hits and 20,443 page views, so the cult of the AL is growing.

Anyway, thanks to you all for reading.

23 comments:

Anonymous said...

Congrats---I'd say a lot of it is being able to vent about what the state of libraries has turned into, instead of being another "libraries greatest" zombie. If I hear that quote about how the librarians hold all the world's knowledge so don't make 'em mad one more time............

LittleJennLibrarian said...

Congratulations AL. Even though I usually want to jump under a bus after reading your blog and the posted responses, I always come back. Instead I usually just sigh and think "Why did I bother going to grad school?" Maybe I should take up Martinis.

Anonymous said...

Probably the most helpful thing about your blog is seeing that other people have been facing the same situation(s) as me. No field trumpets itself as much as thelibrarians, and as one of your posters has said, it is a cursed profession.

I got my degree over ten years ago, and since then it's been every trial under the sun.

I kept thinking I would look back some day at all the things I was going through and laugh. I had one library that had been trying to fill a position for years; the head of the search committee kept giving me the run around that my diploma and transcripts said "Master of Science" rather than MLS, and no amount of showing him I was from a well known accredited school would work, it had to be his way.

Another I had nine letters of reference on and it still wasn't enough, and on it goes.

For every good librarian there's ten more who are small minded and petty people to whom it doesn't matter their BA was in Basket Weaving and they got their MLS from the Online Community College of Central Yakitpitz, now they're the damn LIBRARIAN and will lord it over all the little staff people and MLS graduates.

Seeing someone who can barely turn their computer on demanding anyone coming in meet a 2nd master's degree requirement is positively sickening.

I'm past getting sad or upset, all I look back on my experience in librarianship as a complete and utter waste. If anyone reading this is in library school do yourself a favor and quit right now, don't ever look back.

Anonymous said...

Very good work, AL. You give many a fussertated librarian a chance to laugh and point sardonically at our profession and go : HA-ha-ha!
But(t), I wonder what percentages of these hits are from those looking for "alternative information" nudge-nudge, wink-wink, say-no-more, say-no-more.

Anonymous said...

"For every good librarian there's ten more who are small minded and petty people"

I ran into these types while spinning my wheels for two years, trying to land my first library gig. I was cautioned not to take a children's librarian position if I ever wanted to work with adults in the future due to petty librarians who would see that entry on the resume and black ball me because they would assume I could not work with adults and hence the childrens position. Same goes for accepting a paraprofessional position if I ever hoped to land a librarian job some day. I really began to doubt I would ever land a professional position with this petty criteria.

Keep the faith and hang in there, good things do and will happen, sometimes they just take way longer than expected.

And oh yeah, props to the AL for her blog reaching the 100,000 hit club!

Anonymous said...

I'm sure at least 10,000 of those hits are mine, so don't let it go to your head too much.

Anonymous said...

And may you get at least 100K more. Congratulations and keep blogging away. Someone has to say what needs to be said, and I am glad it is you so I can come over and read it. Thanks.

AL said...

"I'm sure at least 10,000 of those hits are mine, so don't let it go to your head too much."

If my head got any bigger, I'd have to grease the door to get it outside.

Another 10K are probably mine. I also check my profile 30 times a day to build up the profile views number. All part of my marketing strategy.

Anonymous said...

AL:

Forget this milestone. Let's ask a real question, like how many t-shirts have you sold?

AL said...

Not very many, but I'm planning a redesign and a new campaign soon.

Anonymous said...

AL:

Someone needs to ask this question:

Do you have this creepy-looking cat tattoed on your ankle or lower back?

Brent said...

Congrats on this. It's hard to crank these many relatively coherent posts.

Anonymous said...

Maybe you should re-design your shirts to read 'Library Bitch 2.0' Bad language on t-shirts sells, AL.

AL said...

I have no tattoos, and don't plan to get any.

Anonymous said...

Yes, yessss AL, theee plahn isss working, it's WORKING.

--Taupey, dim witted minion wannabe

Anonymous said...

Keep up the good work.

Signed,
An Enemy of the People

Anonymous said...

that was me at 2:07 yesterday: do I win anything? T-Shirt? Van Halen tickets? refund on the last four credits of my MLS? a kind thought?
just curious.

AL said...

You win my eternal respect and admiration, unless of course you stumbled upon the AL searching for Irish porn.

Anonymous said...

I found you only recently and have been catching up on all the old entries. Sad but nice to know there are lots of people in the same boat as me, who got the MLS based on the load o'crap sold to us by the ALA/library school recruiters and have been struggling ever since. Personally, I threw up my hands in frustration and went back to the field I was in when I decided to go to library school. At least I can keep a roof over my head and food in my kitchen now.

Anonymous said...

Congrats and continued success. If not for this blog, I doubt I could put into words the frustration of having an MLIS and no job to go with it.

Anonymous said...

How about a tattoo of a martini glass, on a big body part, where no one can see it of course.

Stephen Denney said...

Congratulations. I wonder if the attacks from certain individuals on the left may have helped increase your readership.

AL said...

There's no such thing as bad publicity. I think John Berry and his irrelevant and uninformed attacks helped bring more regular readers than any single person. I can't thank him enough.

But I also get a lot of new readers every time I write the token snarky post on some national library issue. I think the readership almost doubled after the "hip librarians" post, for example. People want to come read what that crazy, mean librarian has to say. They can't believe they just read that. Then they read some more. Then the ones who get it stay for the party.