Library recommenders systems
Have you ever experienced a situation when you've borrowed a book from a library and a week later got an email saying that someone requested that book and you have to return it in a few days? It just happened to me a couple of weeks ago when i was required to return two books of Manuel Castells without even getting a chance to read them well. And i personally got curious about who is that person requesting the same books i am interested in. What else does s/he read?
And this is where i though about Amazon.com and wondered wouldn't it be cool if there was a recommender's system embedded in a library website? For example you search for a book and you see what else people searching for the same book looked at. People could post reviews and comments on particular items, reflecting for example on how useful the book or an article were for a particular course. Moreover, once a new book, supposedly relevant to your interests, would arrive to the library, you could get a notice about that. Etc.
Wouldn't all that and more (take a look at Amazon for example), make the entire library search richer and more engaging? Wouldn't it make the life easier when you start searching for literature on a subject you have no clue about? Wouldn't it get students more involved in the library, thus contributing both to their learning experience and community building? Where is potential flaw in this idea?
What do you think? I have a sense that if such a system is not already implemented somewhere, it is soon going to be...
6 comments:
I think it's a fine idea, although there are some issues with doing it in a library around privacy of patron records. Someone a few years ago wrote a program to extract book mentions on Amazon from blog posts, and use those to make recommendations. (Amazon also already does recommending itself, too, with its "people who looked at/bought X also liked Y" stuff.) I think bookcrossing.com ran some recommendation experiments at one point, though I don't know if they ever went all the way to fielding one live. But it would surely be useful.
Funny - I was brought to this posting by a google alert -have been waiting for somebody else to come up with this idea. I thought about it about a year ago, and even talked to some college offcials about it. The main objection was that some scolars may consider their library searches and history of requests as part of their research, and, therefore, proprietory. But one can definitely implement it as an opt out - want to write a proposal for something like it?
Misha
I can see why there may be an issue with doing it without engaging the community. But i think once it is done following the free will of people involved and volunteer contribution, i don't see where there could be a problem.
Thank you Dan, I'll take a look at bookcrossing.com...
Mish, why don't you drop me an email?
You are right, actually there is already one such implementation in China(http://www.douban.com/), but totally in Chinese... Users on "Douban" are able to "gather"(or cluster) together with common interests on some specific books, and user-generated comments also. But your idea about library notification is new. But, one thing, not everybody has a library around. I mean websites like Amazon.com are so convenient that offering books online would be a better choice. That's the model of Flickr and also Douban. But, i do believe the long tail gonna happen in these realms.
You should see the project that my student in S&TS, Shay David, developed with the help of Geri and others, called "Appraise" -- it was a plan to add a recommendation system to the Cornell library system, much as you described. I don't know its current status.
http://www.shaydavid.info/
choose "projects" then scroll down to "appraise"
Thank you Tarleton!
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