The digital public and computing academics

The online survey is now closed. There have been two arms of the survey (professional service route, and university and library route), and we are delighted to report that the grand total for both of them is 3,468 responses.

One of the items of feedback that John Tuck brought back from Western Australia (see previous blog entry) related to the extent to which the project is paying attention to people generally as well as the most distinguished individuals. We are committed by the original proposal to conduct a survey of 1000 academics. However, earlier in the year it was decided to also embrace what I call the Digital Public, members of the public, or citizens, actively using computers in their lives. The total (from both arms of the survey) for academics is 1053, while that for the digital public is 2415.

We are very grateful to everyone who took the time and made the effort to complete the survey. We shall be undertaking the prize draw shortly, and will report in this blog when the vouchers have been sent to the winner.

The numbers reached could not have been achieved without the help of many people in highlighting the link to the survey. In due course we shall try to thank by name as many as possible of those who helped; but we are particularly indebted to Suvi Kankainen and Lawrence Christensen of the British Library's Press Office, whose press release led to mentions in the Guardian newspaper and the Times Higher Education for example (and of course to all publications and websites themselves).

Thanks too to Colin Wight and Adrian Arthur of the British Library's Web Services team who gave prominence to the link on the website at a competitive time.

A further note of thanks from me to my team mates: Ian Rowlands (the mastermind behind the two-armed approach) and Pete Williams (the relentless searcher for websites where a link to our survey could encamp for a while).

It is clear from initial examination of the data that the analysis will yield some very interesting findings. More anon....