Kevin -- I like your caveat about giving higher ranking to titles that
have more availability! I might tweak our code to see how much it
changes the suggestions.
Co-incidentally, I'm just in the midst of working on course specific new
book list feeds for our students.
Rather than quiz the subject librarians for suitable Dewey ranges for
each course (heck, I can't even get them to agree on what a "new book"
actually is!), I'm going back through the circulation data to find out
what students on each course have previously borrowed. Cross reference
that with the classification for each item borrowed, and (hopefully) I
should be able to generate the Dewey ranges automatically.
Just out of interest, in the UK there's a JISC project ("Towards
Implementation of Library 2.0 and the E-framework") which is currently
looking at the use of data within libraries.
regards
Dave Pattern
Library Systems Manager
University of Huddersfield
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Kevin M Kidd
Sent: 21 May 2008 16:05
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: [NGC4LIB] Circulation Data and Recommender Systems
I have always believed (and still do believe) that circulation data
holds loads of latent information that can be used to improve services
to our users. This includes using it as input for recommender systems;
however, there are some caveats when you are thinking of using circ data
as the basis for recommendations:
- All non-circulating items would be excluded from recommendations
- Recommendations would be influenced by the availability of the
materials to be loaned. For example, items that are in high demand, but
are available in one (or few) copies would be ranked lower than less
interesting books which are available in more copies, because library
users have the tendency to check out whatever is currently available to
them.
For more, see http://www.dlib.org/dlib/may08/monnich/05monnich.html
--------------------------------------
Kevin M. Kidd, MA, MLIS
Library Applications & Systems Manager
Boston College Libraries
Phone: 617-552-1359
Fax: 617-552-1089
e-Mail: kevin.kidd_at_bc.edu
Blog: http://datadrivenlibrary.blogspot.com/
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Received on Wed May 21 2008 - 10:14:17 EDT