26 September 2011

No Tweeters Here!

 
Thank you to everyone who filled in the questionnaire on Internet use that was handed out at the Society's September meeting.  The answers you gave us are helpful in understanding how the Society’s website is used by our members.

Use of Internet by people filling in the survey
Why the questionnaire?  Well we know a lot about our website visitors, how many there are, where they are logged in, how they get to the website and what type of machine they are using.

Based on those people at the meeting who filled in a questionnaire, it seems reasonable to expect almost three-quarters of our members to be regular internet users. That is lower than the Canadian average but the average age of a Society member is probably higher than the Canadian average.  

Not counting non-members who didn't know the Society had a website and people who said they never used the Internet it seems that other members do use the Society's site. The three most mentioned features are shown in the following chart.  People said they used a lot of different Internet tools but nobody admitted to “tweeting”.

Reported Use of the Society's Web Site
Some general statistics - discounting, bots, crawlers, worms and their ilk we currently have about 6,000 “hits” a month. In August 2011 that translated into 329 "different people" (based on IP addresses) visiting the website. And they must find something interesting because many of those people returned.  In August we averaged 1.7 visits per visitor and they looked at an average of 5.7 pages on each visit.


The current website was published in December 2010 and is kept up to date (usually) on a monthly basis. Based on the feedback in the questionnaire we may re-arrange the site to make popular pages easier to find, but, to keep those visitors interested in the history of Hastings County and the Society we need (like any other publication) have fresh interesting material to publish.

Contributions and Ideas are Always Welcome!


19 September 2011

Ontario Volunteer Service Awards

Ruth Boyce receives her five-year 
pin from Richard Hughes

Luella Parkhurst receives her ten-year
 pin from Richard Hughes
Volunteers have been a very important part of the Hastings Heritage Centre's operations since it opened.



Pictured here Ruth Boyce and Luella Parkhurst being awarded their five and ten year pins respectively by the Society's acting President Richard Hughes.











In June this year service award pins were presented to Hastings Heritage Centre volunteers Bobbi Jo Morris (five years), Bill Kennedy (five years, and Katharine Mills (ten years) at the Ontario Volunteer Service Awards ceremony held on the 3rd of May at the Banquet Centre in Belleville.