Happy Birthday, ALSC Blog!

Eight years ago, under the able leadership of our first Blog Manager, Teresa Walls, the ALSC Blog was born. Since then we have worked to fulfill our mission “to provide a venue for coverage of time sensitive news in children’s librarianship, current issues in the field, and programs, conferences, initiatives, resources, and activities of interest to ALSC members and those interested in children’s librarianship.” In 2010, when Teresa decided to devote more time to her family, I was honored to take over as the ALSC Blog Manager.

As I write this, I find it hard to decide which of many amazing numbers related to the Blog I should share…

Since our first post in 2007, we have had:

• nearly 3100 posts; in the last 12 months, we have had 533 posts. That’s an average of almost 1 1/2 posts per day!
• 398 Guest Bloggers
• live bloggers at ALA Conferences, ALSC Institutes, and PLA
• thousands of comments

We only started keeping analytics stats in December 2010. Since that time, we have had:

• 1,385,679 page views
• 572,956 unique users

The top ten posts of all time on our blog are:

1. The Three Little Pigs and the Preschool Science
2. Body Science for Preschoolers: Using our brains to learn about our bodies
3. Where to Download Classic Children’s Books for Free
4. Color Science: A STEM Program for Preschoolers
5. Beyond Legos: Coding for Kids
6. Best Multicultural Books of 2014
7. It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane… It’s a Superhero Training Academy
8. STEM Takes Flight: Airplane Science
9. Unusual Storytime Themes
10. Sensory Storytime: A (brief) How-To Guide

Many, many of our posts elicited comments. The posts receiving the most comments were:

1. A Great Loss in ALSC (115 comments)
2. Pick Me! Pick Me! (53 comments)
3. The Three Little Pigs and the Preschool Science (52 comments)
4. Anti-Gay Books and Your Library (44 comments)
5. Using Evernote for a Storytime Archive (29 comments)

The success of the ALSC Blog would not be possible without our ALSC Bloggers, children’s librarians from around North America who write intriguing and interesting  posts each month; to them I offer a heartfelt “Thank You!”

I truly value working with the ALSC Blog and am looking forward to seeing it celebrate many more anniversaries.  I’d love to know what you value about this Blog. How has it impacted your professional life? What issues would you love the ALSC Blog to cover? Let us know in the comments below.