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<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>Along the lines of David Stern’s
point, during that webinar I asked about (but didn’t get an answer then –
it was one of those one-way, submit your questions via this chat box) whether
ExLibris will undertake or sponsor studies on that potential positive feedback
loop … the more an article gets chosen, the more it gets recommended, the
more it gets chosen, etc. I would be concerned about that too, and
would think adjustments to their recommendation algorithm based on that consideration
might be part of any trial/negotiation process.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>The other presenter, from the California
State U. system, mentioned that the deployment of bX led to substantially
reduced demand/cost for ILL’d articles on one, large campus, a slight
increase on another, smaller one, from 2008 to 2009 … acknowledging that
these are primarily undergraduate, teaching universities.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>A recording of <a
href="https://event.on24.com/eventRegistration/EventLobbyServlet?target=registration.jsp&eventid=184680">that
webinar</a> is supposed to be available within a few days.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Bookman Old Style","serif";
color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Bookman Old Style","serif";
color:#1F497D'>-- Stefan<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Bookman Old Style","serif";
color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
</div>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<div>
<div style='border:none;border-top:solid #B5C4DF 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>From:</span></b><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>
yulwww-bounces@mailman.yale.edu [mailto:yulwww-bounces@mailman.yale.edu] <b>On Behalf
Of </b>Okerson, Ann<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Thursday, February 18, 2010 10:18<br>
<b>To:</b> yulwww@mailman.yale.edu; yulpub@mailman.yale.edu<br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [Yulwww] Recommender services<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
</div>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>Dear all, I was sure that
I'd been part of a message chain on this service, and I went back into my full
e-mail archive to find what it was. For those who are interested, the
discussion was with the Borrow Direct Collections AULs and I reproduce it
here. It gives some sense of peer institutions to contact. I'll
also ask how Penn and Princeton doing with the trial and report back if I hear.
So far, this is all there was. Ann<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>****<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>7/13 - From Martha Brogan, U
Penn<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>Yesterday, I heard a
presentation by Ex Libri's Orie and others about their new bX recommender
service. It is described here: <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>http://www.exlibrisgroup.com/category/bXOverview.
Boston College discussed their experience as a Beta site. (Princeton has
also been a beta site.) The service aggregates use-data from all SFX
contributing institutions to recommend other articles to readers across a wide
range of platforms and databases (e.g., Scopus, Ebsco, PubMed, etc.) This
service has lots of potential to lead towards dynamic knowledge mapping so we
can see inter-relationships among research areas. Eventually, it could give
us trend analysis and help us better understand new directions in
research. In the meantime, it offers usage stats (journal and article
level?) that can give us valuable insights into how our collections are
used. At an annual subscription cost of $3K and relatively simple set-up,
I am interested in subscribing at Penn.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>Boston College reported high %
satisfaction w/ the recommender results and they had their 4 most critical
librarians put it thru its paces. My understanding is that it is phase
one only and they hope to develop citation tracking soon. It will improve
as more research insts such as ours join and contribute data<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>WITH A CONSORTIAL PURCHASE by
6-20 members, the price drops to $15k. I thought this would be a great
joint purchase--altho the savings are not huge for us, the prospect of adding
and having access to our combined usage data is a powerful concept.
However, I understand that Dartmouth and Cornell are not SFX customers; Yale,
Princeton and Penn are. Don't know about Brown and Columbia?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>Given the above, perhaps this
should be bounced up to NERL? Anyway, I wanted to alert you to it and get
your reaction. It builds on work that van de Sompel and Bohlan have done
at Los Almos w/ the mesur project: <a href="http://www.mesur.org/MESUR.html">http://www.mesur.org/MESUR.html</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>7/13 - Reply from David Stern,
Brown<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>This tool restricts next step
discovery to popular material identified by previous searchers ... while it
provides an additional user- generated pointer, it does not really provide the
broader research navigation elements we pay dearly for -- citation tracking,
controlled vocabulary, find similar hedges. It is interesting, but may
ultimately be distracting and/or dangerous if we take seriously our mission to
provide high quality navigation tools. Worth looking at, but the limited number
of users generating the pointers us also a concern, since the largest
percentage of our users actuaalt link using CrossRef (Google without a VPN) or
our A-Z list which is separate from SFX.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>7/13 - Reply from David Magier,
Princton<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>Marvin and I have been in touch
about this and after he gets back from ALA, we'll put together some more info.
Meanwhile here are my two cents on automated recommender/pointer services like
this. Philosophically, I am all for crunching usage data as much as possible
and extracting every last ounce of value out of that data that we can.
But I am also quite leery of potential over-reliance on such data for steering
patrons to resources in largely unmediated ways. It's one thing to say that
prior usage can be a good predictor of *likelihood* of future usefulness. But
the devil is in the details of how, by whom, for what, and under which
conditions resources get used successfully, and I have a feeling that the
artificial intelligence algorithms behind "recommender" services are
simply not subtle enough to account for all those factors properly. It's not
that the resulting pointers won't be useful, but, just as with Google searching,
there is a danger that automated pointing will get users to "settle"
for content that is "good enough" for the moment, but not really the
*best* pointer (which would have resulted from a more mediated interaction).
Anyway, more on Princeton's experiences with bX soon.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>10/14 - Martha Brogan, Penn<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>You may recall that I wrote you
all during the summer after ALA about Penn's interest in bX recommender. We
plan to start a trial of this service later this month. If you are
interested and also conduct a trial, let's explore the possibility of joining
as a consortia. It seems as though we would have a very powerful data set
that could help inform us about important patterns in research. You do
not have to be an SFX-subscriber to use this service.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>Info at: <a
href="http://www.exlibrisgroup.com/category/bXOverview">http://www.exlibrisgroup.com/category/bXOverview</a><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>10/19<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>From: Syed Ahmed
<Syed.Ahmed@exlibrisgroup.com<mailto:Syed.Ahmed@exlibrisgroup.com>><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>Date: Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 10:26
AM<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>Subject: RE: bX Recommender
Service<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>To: Adam Chandler
<alc28@cornell.edu<mailto:alc28@cornell.edu>><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>Hi Adam, Marian is no
longer with Ex Libris and I'm taking over her responsibilities. At the moment,
bX is in beta mode and only works with SFX. We are working on making it available
for non-SFX resolvers but we don't have a timeframe when this will be
available. Please let me know if you any other questions.
Syed<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<div>
<div style='border:none;border-top:solid #B5C4DF 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>From:</span></b><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>
yulwww-bounces@mailman.yale.edu [mailto:yulwww-bounces@mailman.yale.edu] <b>On
Behalf Of </b>Bauer, Kathleen<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Thursday, February 18, 2010 9:41 AM<br>
<b>To:</b> Kramer, Stefan; yulwww@mailman.yale.edu; yulpub@mailman.yale.edu<br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [Yulwww] Recommender services<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
</div>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>Hello,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>The bX Recommender Service does
sound very promising. Nisa Bakkalbasi had also sent to me word of a
presentation by Nettie Legace of Ex Libris which she saw at the recent
Electronic Resources and Libraries conference:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>"Services recommending
books - BibTip, LibraryThing, University of Huddersfield borrowing
recommendations, and articles - bX from Ex Libris, PubMed, Synthese (CISTI) now
exist in the academic context. JISC in the UK is sponsoring a major project,
MOSAIC: "Making Our Shared Activity Information Count." This session
will provide an overview of these recommendation systems, describe their
different approaches to data mining, and discuss their role in improving
information retrieval and user experience in a now nearly fully online
scholarly information world."<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>When the Usability and Assessment
Advisory Group looked at functionality needed for the next generation catalog,
one of the things that we thought should be available would be ways to harness
data about what patrons are using. Traditionally, scholars have used citation
information to know what articles and books are influential in a field.
Ejournals and services such as SFX record information about what journals and
articles are being accessed: the data recorded are a potentially rich source of
information that could also be used to identify key articles and journals, in a
way that would be faster than citation information. This wouldn’t replace
citation information, but it would add to it. It’s important to note that
this information is also not linked to individual patrons—data are
pooled, so that overall, not individual use, are being examined. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>Scott Matheson and I have been
looking at ways we might improve the library’s interfaces by mining use
data. We’ve been concentrating on mining search log files
from the web site. Based on the what we are hearing, we will add bX to the list
of services to consider for making better use of data to improve interfaces and
services. If people hear of other promising services, please pass them
along. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>Thanks,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>Katie<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<div>
<div style='border:none;border-top:solid #B5C4DF 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>From:</span></b><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'> yulpub-bounces@mailman.yale.edu
[mailto:yulpub-bounces@mailman.yale.edu] <b>On Behalf Of </b>Kramer, Stefan<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Wednesday, February 17, 2010 4:07 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> yulwww@mailman.yale.edu; yulpub@mailman.yale.edu<br>
<b>Subject:</b> [Yulpub] Recommender services<br>
<b>Importance:</b> Low<o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
</div>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>I attended a Library Journal-sponsored webinar about the <a
href="http://www.exlibrisgroup.com/category/bXOverview">bX Recommender Service</a>
today; it’s supposedly based on the <a
href="http://public.lanl.gov/herbertv/papers/jcdl06_accepted_version.pdf">work
of Bollen & Van de Sompel</a>. It sounds quite intriguing … has
something like this been considered at YUL? Other “recommendations
based on other readers’ choices” activities mentioned in the
webinar, aside from the ever-cited Amazon.com example, included <a
href="http://sero.co.uk/jisc-mosaic.html">MOSAIC</a> and <a
href="http://www.bibtip.org/">BibTip</a>.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Bookman Old Style","serif";
color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Bookman Old Style","serif";
color:#1F497D'>-- Stefan<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Bookman Old Style","serif";
color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
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