Taking Stock: My Scribd Best Sellers

A little over a year ago, I started posting some documents on the Scribd.com website.  All of these documents are accessible at http://www.scribd.com/dan_durning .  I use Scribd because it hosts documents in many different formats, and it is easy both to upload documents and to access them. Also, readers can readily download documents if they wish to read them off-line.

My posted documents fall into one of two types: Those that I have scanned and those that I written. The scanned documents are mainly the Hillcrest Junior High School (Fayetteville, Arkansas) student newspaper (different issues from 1959 to 1962) and the Woodland Junior High School Yearbook (1961 and 1962). The written documents include several fun stories about Fayetteville sports in the early 1960s and some more serious research on German immigration and on Vienna during the interwar period.

The Scribd site keeps statistics on the number of times each of the documents has been accessed. Also, it shows the average time that readers viewed a document when they accessed it. If the average time is a few seconds, it is clear that readers were just quickly looking to see if the document interests them, then clicking rapidly away. Longer average views indicate that most people who access the document actually read them. (The site provides no information identifying readers other than the country in which the readers live.)

The following is a list of the top ten documents by number of views from October 1 to Feb. 18; for each document I also show the average length of time each document was viewed:

Number 1
333 views; time 9:40 (average length of views in minutes:seconds)
The Season of Justin and J.D.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/48613345/The-Season-of-Justin-and-JD

Number 2; time 6:32
298 Views
Bloodlands (Book Review)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/47577036/Bloodlands-Review

Number 3
268 Views; time 1.52
Woodland Junior High School Roundup, 1962 (excerpt)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/48476958/Woodland-Junior-High-School-Roundup-1962-Fayetteville-Arkansas


Number 4
261 Views; time 5:51
Bubba's Nemesis: The Battle for the 1962 Championship of the Fayetteville Babe Ruth League
http://www.scribd.com/doc/59006218/Bubba-s-Nemesis-The-Battle-for-the-1962-Championship-of-the-Fayetteville-Babe-Ruth-League



Number 5
258 Views; time 2:15
Woodland Junior High School Roundup, 1961 (part 1)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/64334228/Woodland-Junior-High-School-Roundup-1961-part-1-Fayetteville-Arkansas

Number 6
249 Views; time 2:01
Hillcrest Indians 1961-1962 Championship Basketball Season
http://www.scribd.com/doc/48142615/Hillcrest-Indians-Fayetteville-Arkansas-1961-62-Championship-Basketball-Season


Number 7
211 Views; time 1:15
Smoke Signals, September 1960 (Hillcrest Junior High School Newspaper)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/49229593/The-Smoke-Signals-September-1960-Hillcrest-Jr-High-Newspaper

Number 8
207 Views; time 5:51
Marcel W Fodor: Foreign Correspondent
http://www.scribd.com/doc/65502558/Marcel-W-Fodor-Foreign-Correspondent

Number 9
191 Views; time 4:09
"Your Husband Starved to Death": 
The Sad Fate of Ernest H Klavon in Koenigsberg, East Prussia
http://www.scribd.com/doc/57803408/Your-husband-starved-to-death-The-Sad-Fate-of-Ernest-H-Klavon-in-Konigsberg-East-Prussia-1945

Number 10
153 Views; time 0:48
Adriano, Rosa, and Dennis Dornik Wash Dishes in Boom-Time Germany
http://www.scribd.com/doc/62108620/Adriano-Rosa-Dennis-Dornik-Wash-Dishes-in-Boom-time-Germany

I expect some more recent postings to catch up with some of these top-ten posts in the next few months. Also, more documents are on the way. I have several research projects in different stages of completion.

Thanks for reading the Scribd documents and the eclecticatbest.com blog.