I could be wrong, but I think I recall that the most popular books list before a year ago was labeled as the top 100 books of the last month, not the last day or week. I don't think we were told or that it was labeled as such, but I assumed that the sort order was from most popular to least popular and that assumption seemed to coincide roughly with what I would have expected for that. When the new site launched it was considerably different. The default sort was the most popular of the last month and alphabetized by title. That could be changed to the last three months, the last week or the last day, but there was no way to get a sort order of most popular to least popular, only by title, author, date of publication or copyright date. That did not please me. At some time -- and I had gotten so used to the undesirable sort that I did not notice immediately and had to just happen to come across it -- The default sort order changed. That is, when you clicked the link to the most popular list they were already sorted in some order. No books appeared on it that had not been added in the last month and it looked like it was the most popular in order of popularity which had been added to the collection in the last month. The sort order and period of time was still adjustable, but when one did adjust it one was still forced into those sort orders and time periods that did not reflect popularity rank and the only way to get back to that default sort order was to back out of the page and click the link to the most popular list again. I did consider that default order an improvement though. Without it it seemed to just be a list of pretty much any book that had been added in the time period selected even once and you couldn't tell wich had been downloaded once and which had been downloaded a thousand times.
Now, with the most recent changes to the search feature the most popular list has changed too. As I said, it would be really nice if certain features of it were labeled so that we would know what it is exactly that we are looking at, but I can tell you what I think it is. I am supposing that since it was formerly oriented to the last month that it still is. In fact, the number of results -- you mentioned about 1600 -- is about equal to the number of results that showed for the most popular of the last month before. There is a preponderence of books recently added to the collection. That makes sense because, even though I may choose my reading from the entire collection, I am aware that a lot of people download only from the most recently added list. In addition, though, there are books on the list that have been in the collection for some time and most of them are books that I would expect to be popular. So what I think we have there is a default list that sorts all the books downloaded in the last month in order of popularity regardless of when they were added to the collection. If I am correct it is a better list than has been there in the past before or after the transition to the new site about a year ago. That is, if you use the combo box to display 100 results then you get the top 100 most popular books from the last month just like you did on the old site, but then you can go on to the next page and get a list of the second most popular books in order of popularity and then on to the third page for the next 100 most popular books in order of popularity and so forth until you see all 1600 of the books that have been downloaded in the past month in order of their popularity. I emphasize that I think that is what is going on. The clues I mentioned lead me to think this. However, I don't know and that is what is causing me frustration. There is no label that tells us precisely what we are looking at and for a list of anything to have meaning one really has to know exactly what it is a list of and how it is ordered.
Alas, though, I will have to admit that I am worrying about something of little consequence. I really do not need to know which books are the most popular. It will not effect what I choose to download myself. In fact, it tends to cause me to be aghast sometimes when I see that a book that I would consider worthless is wildly popular. Nevertheless, though, I still enjoy seeing what others are most interested in on Bookshare, so I wish I could know exactly what I am looking at when I look at that list.
Let me mention, though, that some time back Carrie did tell us that eventually there should be a feature that will tell us the exact number of times any particular book has been downloaded. I do look forward to that.
Roger Loran Bailey"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, & the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."
Karl Marx The Militant: http://www.themilitant.com Pathfinder Press: http://www.pathfinderpress.com Granma International: http://www.granma.cu/ingles/index.html----- Original Message ----- From: "Jamie Yates, CPhT" <mirxtech@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Monday, January 18, 2010 11:40 AM Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Re: Most Popular Books
No, what I mean is the really, really old most popular downloads showed onlythe 100 most popular downloads for that day or that week. I know Bookshare membership is way up since then, but I have a hard time thinking that 16000+ books are downloaded in one day. -- Jamie in Michigan Currently Reading: The Beach Street Knitting Society and Yarn Club by Gil McNeil Earn cash for answering trivia questions every 3 hours: http://instantcashsweepstakes.com/invitations/ref_link/49497 See everything I've read this year at: www.michiganrxtech.com/books.html
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