On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 02:20, Weinheimer Jim <j.weinheimer_at_aur.edu> wrote:
> It would be nice if it were that simple, but Google's algorithm (the entire strength of
> Google) is based on trillions of links to all different sites (the page with most links
> to it by the most linked = #1). There's nothing like that option in the library, and
> even Google's algorithm isn't so hot in Google Books.
Actually, this was true a few years ago. They've moved on, and other
things are at play now. Besides, all it takes for this to work in
libraries if links are (indeed still) the main stew booster, is for
libraries to properly share their stuff! Not hard at all. C'mon, make
it easier for Google to help you out.
> Google's ranking by "relevance" (a semi-propagandistic term since it means
> something quite different from the normal sense of "relevance")
No it doesn't; It means whatever it means in the context of where you
are, just like in real-life. Within Google it is relevant to the words
you typed in. Don't like the relevance? Switch your words, just like
in real-life.
> would need to be recreated in the catalog, but how? By items most checked
> out (most popular?) By getting into publisher databases and trying to arrange
> by printing statistics? Or by retail statistics and best-sellers?
Ah, well *now* we're cookin'! :) I've got heaps of stuff about this,
mostly prototypes and hacks before I quit the library world, things
like "Heat Engine" which uses inverse cumulative histograms to track
real popularity of books (without the dreaded short-term effects of
'peak', and deals with normative decline as opposed to pure
statistics), or the "Memory Peak" (dealing with books borrow history,
tracking subject headings over time and match it against keywords
people search with in the OPAC), another system for mapping website
searches against catalog searches and finding corrolations, or if you
try http://ll01.nla.gov.au Kent Fitch (bless his heart!) played with
the ABC news feed, pulling it down and try to find resources that
somewhat matches the news items in question (right-hand side box).
Funky and fun, and sometimes really helpful and relevant.
In fact, library developers (and not just programmers) should be
spending a lot of their time trying this stuff out and thinking about
new ways to eal with what you've got, because, well, it's what you've
got, and you won't get much else by the sound of it. :(
> Or by "rate this book!" Let's say that Nietzsche's "Thus spoke Zarathustra"
> got 200 votes while Kant's "Critique of the Pure Reason" only got 50. What
> would somebody conclude?!
Well, there's other and better ways. For example, make your OPACs and
catalogs more in the vein of social websites, and introduce roles on
it where librarians can overlay an expert layer over the data. By
that, reference librarians can surf and search around, tagging their
books, make lists of recomendations and so forth. Make your systems
with more roles in them, the *same* system, and this will open up
opportunities you just don't have right now.
> While some of these tools are interesting, I'm not sure which ones really belong in a library....
Again, a friendly reminder that your users are ... *everyone*. So yes,
they probably belong in the library.
Regards,
Alex
--
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Project Wrangler, SOA, Information Alchemist, UX, RESTafarian, Topic Maps
------------------------------------------ http://shelter.nu/blog/ --------
Received on Tue Mar 17 2009 - 20:48:11 EDT