[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Seeking funding partners for upcoming development projects

[Kathy Lussier]

Hi all,

Today marks the first day of the new fiscal year for MassLNC, and our  
development committee has identified a few new enhancements we are  
hoping to sponsor over the next year.

We have received proposals from Equinox for all three projects, but  
MassLNC needs help to fund these projects. I am sending out this  
e-mail to see if there are other Evergreen sites interested in helping  
us fund any of these projects. For more details, you can e-mail me  
directly at klussier at masslnc.org.


Also, if you are already working on a similar project or just want to  
provide some feedback for our proposed projects, please feel to share  
your feedback on the list.

These three projects are listed on the new Proposed Development  
Projects wiki page at:
http://wiki.evergreen-ils.org/doku.php?id=evergreen_features:proposed_development_projects

ACTIVITY METRIC FOR RELEVANCE RANKING
The goal of this project is for a title's activity (circulations,  
number of holds, etc.) to affect the relevance of that title when  
retrieving search results. Google and Amazon use popularity with much  
success when ranking search results. I think Evergreen would see  
similar success if it were to incorporate activity into its relevance  
algorithm.

As an example, if a user were conducting a keyword search on "abraham  
lincoln,"  there are many books, movies, etc. in most US libraries  
where the words "abraham lincoln" show up in the title. There would be  
no way to tease out the titles that are getting the most attention by  
readers. In fact, a title like "Team of Rivals" ranks very low in our  
search results even though there is a fairly high likelihood it is the  
title the patron is seeking.  By applying a metric based on activity,  
we might be able to see those more-recently popular titles floating  
higher in the search results list.

The current proposal is to make factors like circulation and hold  
activity, record and item age, and item ownership counts available as  
an activity metric. Each factor will embody a "popularity badge" that  
a bib record can earn, and each badge will have a five-point scale,  
where more points indicate a more popular record.

The average of the badge points earned by each record will constitute  
a "popularity star rating". The number and types of badges will break  
ties for average popularity.

A new sort axis of popularity will be created to sort first on the  
cumulative popularity of each record, followed by the query-specific  
relevance available today.

ENHANCEMENTS TO EVERGREEN ALERTS
I mentioned this project in the recent thread on problems with items  
not checking in properly - http://markmail.org/message/rnm5s7wdxjgy3tym.

This project would give Evergreen sites more control over which alerts  
appear during check-in and check-out. The project has three components:

- Separate checkin and checkout copy alerts
- The ability to add temporary copy alerts from the checkin, checkout,  
and item status screen
- A library setting that allows sites to determine if some system  
alerts should appear at checkin and checkout.

MassLNC's full project requirements are available at  
http://masslnc.cwmars.org/node/2764.

This project is not slated to begin until Fall 2014 after sprint 1 of  
the web client project is complete.

MESSAGE CENTER FOR THE PUBLIC CATALOG
This project would create a message center that communicates important  
messages to patrons. Public patron notes will display here, and sites  
will have the ability to configure any action/trigger notice to also  
deliver a notice to the message center.

MassLNC's full project requirements are available at  
http://masslnc.cwmars.org/node/2927.

Feel free to let me know if you have any questions!

Kathy