Things That Broke the Internet in 2018

Last year our Digital Collections had nearly two million pageviews (1,927,745 to be exact), which is remarkable considering that as recently as five years ago we barely cracked half a million. As traffic to the site has exploded, so too has our engagement with social media—we now have an Instagram profile, a Facebook page, and a Pinterest board, not to mention this blog. We thought we'd share some of the online content that made 2018 such a successful year for us.

Let's start with our five most viewed blog posts, which—when taken together—illustrate the diversity of content we published last year. The most viewed of the year, "All the Books That Are Fit to Digitize," looks at recently digitized things from our collection, while the next most read, "Graphically Yours: Tracing David Bowie's Art Influences through Watson's Collection," examines the extraordinary life of David Bowie through books about him in the library.

Our third most viewed, "Firmin-Didot: A French Legacy," was originally published in 2015, but it seems someone shared it all these years later and it had a dramatic second life. (If anyone can help us figure out where it was shared, please let us know by leaving a comment below.) Then there was a post co-authored by a librarian here in Watson Library, Robyn Fleming, and an associate curator in the Department of Drawings and Prints, Femke Speelberg, "Cracking the Universal Code of Beauty: Owen Jones's Grammar of Ornament," that looks at Watson's recently acquired original folio edition of Owen Jones's seminal work, The Grammar of Ornament, published in 1856.

Lastly, Cloisters Librarian Michael Carter's post, "Top of the World: Documenting the Design and Construction of Fort Tryon Park," explores "one of the most unique green spaces in New York City, Fort Tryon Park" through a series of recently digitized photo albums.

And let's not forget our Instagram profile, which saw some truly head-spinning action in 2018. Our "reach growth" went up 99.65%, our "average engagement on reach" went up 109.69%, our "impressions" were up a whopping 124.10%, and we gained 6,751 new followers. Not sure what any of these things mean? Don't worry about it—suffice it to say that people are spending more time (much more time) engaging with the content we posted last year. Like this, our most liked post of last year (and of all time, actually), which is a striking facsimile of the Megillat Esther:

And this, an image of Oliver Byrne's edition of The First Six Books of the Elements of Euclid, was another wildly popular one:

And because we now know that the internet loves tiny books, here's a look at our fifth most popular post of 2018, which captures some very small letterpressed books.

Thanks to all of you out there who follow us, like us, share us, and, most importantly, use the resources we make available online.