Micrographs on the Internet -- the first 18 months

Anja O. Saura

October 1999

First user response query
Electron micrograph maps of Drosophila melanogaster polytene chromosomes were published as a single entity on the Internet in December 1997 (ref. 1). The directory ~saura/EM/ is made up of some 300 files: a main jpg file and an html file for (about) each polytene chromosome division, and additional image files for almost all divisions. In February 1998 "The Drosophila Virtual Library" (ref. 2) and in October 1998 "FlyBase" (ref. 3) set up a link to our micrographs. Here we present certain statistics of file requests. Monthly web server request logs for single files of the directory ~saura/EM/ (ref. 4) were summed up during 18 months (February 1998-July 1999).

Table 1 gives the number of requests per month for the index page and micrograph files for each chromosome arm. According to the web server request logs the total number of requests for the files of the directory ~saura/EM/ was 51 324. The index page (EM/index.html) was requested 4 854 times, and image files (all html and jpg files) 46 470 times. The most requested set of micrographs was division 1.

Table 1.

Month	index	X files	2L files	2R files	3L files	3R files	4, *chr	**other	total
98-02	94	352	109	57	14	15	9	9	659
98-03	132	414	87	128	81	86	15	5	948
98-04	176	562	187	144	176	190	31	10	1476
98-05	192	629	289	189	168	159	18	11	1655
98-06	116	544	305	249	200	199	32	8	1653
98-07	151	743	426	315	417	357	40	17	2466
98-08	178	759	395	209	419	259	32	16	2267
98-09	285	942	465	280	302	287	58	20	2639
98-10	347	1311	444	282	296	237	59	23	2999
98-11	399	1605	587	245	221	225	58	16	3356
98-12	307	1397	571	250	276	115	50	18	2984
99-01	336	1552	618	365	406	323	69	25	3694
99-02	370	1713	615	440	487	258	70	23	3976
99-03	437	1630	953	729	741	465	80	27	5062
99-04	363	1611	925	664	530	415	83	34	4625
99-05	339	1720	633	496	497	503	95	16	4299
99-06	389	1405	614	481	744	473	57	21	4184
99-07	243	994	424	255	269	147	36	14	2382
Total	4854	19883	8647	5778	6244	4713	892	313	51324

(*chr = chromocenter.html; **other = ep100-60.jpg, ep25-100.jpg, ep36-24.jpg, changes1998.html)

The volume of traffic on the site has been evidently due to Drosophila Virtual Library and FlyBase setting up links to our image repository. The effect of well-placed links is widely recognized (ref. 5).

We are aware of the unreliability of server logs and access counters in assessing the popularity of a site (ref. 6). In order to further determine how well our site serves its audience, we are planning to collect feedback from site users.

References

Ref. 1. http://www.helsinki.fi/~saura/EM/
Ref. 2. http://www.ceolas.org/fly/
Ref. 3. http://flybase.bio.indiana.edu
Ref. 4. http://www.helsinki.fi/cgi-bin/etsi-tilasto?~saura
Ref. 5. http://ep.com/faq/webannounce.html
Ref. 6. http://www.cranfield.ac.uk/docs/stats/

Copyright © by Anja Saura, Department of Biosciences, Division of Genetics, University of Helsinki, Finland
anja.saura@helsinki.fi
URL:http://www.helsinki.fi/~saura/EM/requests.html
URN:NBN:fi-fe20021397
Content last modified: 1999-10-09
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