E-mail discussion lists and blogs?

[Sloan, Bernie]

There's been some discussion back and forth on this list about using blogs to distribute information rather than posting notes to e-mail discussion lists.

Technical/access issues aside, I have a very basic curiosity-type question for those of you out there who maintain your own blogs. Do you have a way to measure how many people are exposed to the info in your blogs?

I guess what I am getting at is whether there is any hard information that could be used to measure the "audience" that you are reaching. You can get a general idea with e-mail discussion lists, e.g., a posting to Web4Lib theoretically reaches an "audience" of about 3200 people (i.e., the number of Web4Lib subscribers). How do you tell how big your blog "audience" is?

I realize this is probably a naïve, apples-to-ranges comparison. But I'm curious anyway.  :-)

Bernie Sloan
Senior Library Information Systems Consultant, ILCSO
University of Illinois Office for Planning and Budgeting
616 E. Green Street, Suite 213
Champaign, IL  61820

Phone: (217) 333-4895
Fax:   (217) 265-0454
E-mail: bernies at uillinois.edu