WWW.AU
It is interesting to note that this growth was not uniform over the different categories of sites. A table showing the variations is given below. These figures are affected by the introduction of four new categories over the period, Internet_Services, Media, Science, and Sport. In particular, the Internet_Services category took some of the entries from the Commercial and Network categories, and the Science category reduced the Research category.
Category Dec 94 March 95 Growth % Growth Architecture 2 7 5 250 Art 7 28 21 300 Astronomy 3 13 10 333 Business_Studies 3 24 21 700 Chemistry 3 8 5 167 Commercial 13 33 20 154 Computer_Centre 4 7 3 75 Computer_Science 13 19 6 46 Computing 20 53 33 165 Earth_Science 2 7 5 250 Education 2 19 17 850 Engineering 8 37 29 363 Environment 14 50 36 257 Government 6 32 26 433 Internet_Services 56 56 Library 10 38 28 280 Mathematics 4 23 19 475 Media 15 15 Medical 9 44 35 389 Miscellaneous 14 23 9 64 Movie 1 8 7 700 Multimedia 3 13 10 333 Music 2 21 19 950 Network 13 33 20 154 Personal 4 20 16 400 Physics 4 22 18 450 Research 18 16 -2 -11 School 3 19 16 533 Science 9 9 Social_Science 7 43 36 514 Sport 16 16 Student 2 5 3 150 TAFE 1 1 0 0 University 40 47 7 18 TOTAL 235 809 574 244
The graph above shows the 10 categories which experienced the most growth (400% and upwards) over the period December 1994 to March 1995. The main explanation for these high growth numbers is probably the low base from which they started. By contrast, a category such as Computer_Science shows a lower growth rate of 46% (still significant over a four month period!), largely because a good number of Computer Science Departments already had constructed web sites before December 1994. The same is probably true of general University sites.
The TAFE category is remarkable for its low initial base and not a single additional entry over the four month period. This is in marked contrast to the School category, for example. As mentioned above, the drop in the Research category is accounted for by the introduction of the new Science category.
Another perspective on these categories can be obtained by studying the actual usage statistics for the WWW.AU index.
