Have you ever wondered where MWDL users are? We naturally think of our own local user communities comprising students, researchers, genealogists, and the general public, but were you curious where else MWDL users might be located? 

Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) recently launched a new analytics dashboard for hubs. In addition to a variety of typical usage statistics like website use times, click-through stats, and counts of views from different sources, they also offer a view of users by location! This view displays the “[l]ocations of users who viewed or clicked through at least one of your items on the DPLA website. Equivalent to “location” or “geo network” in Google Analytics.”

In August 2018, MWDL items in DPLA had views all across the United States:

August 2018 US users

Unsurprisingly, we had a large number of users in Utah and throughout the Intermountain West (with the highest number in California with 274!), but also across the rest of the United States. How does this compare with views globally in August?

August 2018 World users

Wow! While the numbers are certainly less concentrated, MWDL items in DPLA got views from places as diverse as Argentina (6 users) to Japan (24 users). 

If we look at 2018 year-to-date users, we can see users in a majority of countries: 

2018 YTD World users

Who wants to travel to Greenland, Papua New Guinea or Madagascar to help fill in a blank? Happy travels!