Wisconsin's Holiday OverDrive Traffic

Following nationwide OverDrive outages over the holidays, the Digital Library Blog posted a little chart showing a big jump in traffic to libraries' OverDrive websites (in addition to an apology for the problems). Here's their chart, showing the nationwide trend:

Traffic at 'Virtual Branch' websites - Nov. 26-Dec. 27

Wisconsin's Digital Download Center website experienced its share of the outages and slowness, too. Wonder how our traffic looked?

Website traffic statistics are famous for being inexact, but it's clear that the Digital Download Center was very much a part of the trend!

OverDrive also reported, "For the first time ever, eBooks out-circulated audiobooks at libraries’ ‘Virtual Branch’ websites." That wasn't true for Wisconsin (audiobooks are still the highest-circulating format); however, in comparing usage from Nov. 26-28 to Dec. 25-27, ebook checkouts increased by 180%. Ebooks are becoming more mainstream, but the increase in our ebook use may also have something to do with the fact that the collection received an infusion of over 600 new ebook titles before Christmas, thanks to the generosity of WPLC Partners and Members.

For any number-crunchers out there, here's the data I used: Download 2010-holiday-traffic (XLS)