Yesterday afternoon, sometime after 2 p.m., Vita Brevis marked a major milestone in the life of a blog with its one-millionth page view. Since it officially launched on 10 January 2014, with Robert Charles Anderson’s Deep Puritan Roots post, Vita Brevis has published almost 650 installments[1] by 73 bloggers, with categories ranging from American History (there are 258 blog posts in this area) to Genealogical Writing (89) to Technology (30).

The tags associated with various blog posts form an interesting word cloud, with Critical Analysis, Research Tips, Object Lessons, and Brick Walls taking priority, although the vaguer Spotlight tag deserves mention as well.

I blush to say that, as of my previous post, I have written the most entries at Vita Brevis, with 144. Alicia Crane Williams will break 100 soon – she is at 98 today. Zachary Garceau has written 35 posts, Penny Stratton 28, Chris Child 26, and Lindsay Fulton 22. And what do we write about?

We write about what interests us, as researchers, as professional genealogists, as editors, as archivists. Sometimes the topic is our own research interests; sometimes we offer tips from our experience as a beginning, an intermediate, or an expert researcher; and sometimes we describe an aspect of our work, here in Boston or elsewhere as part of an NEHGS education program.[2] What we are always trying to do, as promised in an early blog post, is to write “short posts on research methods – applicable to a variety of genealogical subjects – as well as posts on results. Like a mosaic, these posts will, in time, form a new collection for the genealogical researcher to explore.”

Now, after two-and-a-half years, we have reached a milestone suggesting that our readers have found content here that keeps them coming back – for which vote of confidence, many thanks!

Notes

[1] This post, allowing for some pre-publication blogging, is actually the 650th.

[2] Perhaps it’s easier to show it, by reference to some year-end posts that review 2014 (Part 1 and Part 2) and 2015 (Part 1 and Part 2).