Reference on reddit: Can we help?

Jeff MausAngela Henshilwood

Introduction to reddit

In 2014 reddit had 174,088,361 unique visitors from 186 countries

3,267,477 (2%) logged in to comment and vote on 6,175,912,111 pages

http://www.pewinternet.org/files/old-media/Files/Reports/2013/PIP_reddit_usage_2013.pdf

reddit Regional Interest - Google Trends

https://www.google.ca/trends/explore#q=reddit

reddit City Interest – Google Trends

Intro to subreddits – e.g. r/books

Source: http://redditmetrics.com/history

r/worldnews

r/IAMA

AMA with Neil deGrasse Tyson

http://tinyurl.com/listacrl

Subreddits recommended by our audience?r/ELI5 (Explain like I’m 5)r/askhistorians

Introduction to r/scholar

r/scholar Rules

Are you requesting? READ THIS.•See if your article is already available by checking libgen (search using DOI), Google, and Google Scholar.•Provide us a link to the downloadable article. If you can't find one, tell us you tried.•If the request isn’t urgent, please try an interlibrary loan (ILL) first. ILL avoids potential copyright issues and lets libraries know which subscriptions are useful.•Fulfill some requests while you wait for yours!

r/scholar Rules cont’d• Are you fulfilling?• Please be aware of copyright issues and Fair Use Copyright.• To share files, ge.tt and zippyshare are free and reliable.• Be aware that many journal sources embed identifying information into

the PDF.• Thanks for helping your fellow scholars!• In an effort to encourage the free distribution of knowledge, please also

consider using these open access links for your research:• Directory of Open Access Journals• List of open-access journals• Public Library of Science• Google Scholar

Our Analysis:

• Looked at 100 requests in r/Scholar (beginning of December 2014)• Covers 9 days • Average 11 requests per day (some days 14, some days 5)

Breakdown of r/scholar requests by discipline

•72% Science & Applied Science•16% Social Sciences•11% Humanities

How files were shared

What is LibGen?

LibGen Usage by CountryGoogle Trends

Source: http://www.google.ca/trends/explore#q=libgen&cmpt=q&tz=

“anyone know of a

virtual “reference desk” on

reddit and would anyone

would be interested in

starting one?”

Sanderson & Rigby (2013)

• “We’ve reddit, have you?:What librarians can learn from a site full of memes”

Marketing

r/UofT

Thank you!Jeff MausAngela Henshilwood

Bibliography

• Sanderson, B., & Rigby, M. (2013). We've reddit, have you? what librarians can learn from a site full of memes. College & Research Libraries News, 74(10), 518-521. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1512200832?accountid=14771• Halavais, A. (2013). Home made big data? challenges and

opportunities for participatory social research. First Monday, 18(10) doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.5210/fm.v18i10.4876• Reddit Draws Readers, Authors, Publishers. (2013). Publishers Weekly,

260(51), 6-7.