[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Awesome Box Integration
Kathy Lussier
klussier at masslnc.org
Thu Sep 25 20:32:50 EDT 2014
Hi all,
Great discussion so far!
We had a bit of a discussion about privacy concerns in IRC after Terran
sent her original message. One approach we were discussing was storing
the awesome tags in an anonymous fashion, except in cases where patrons
have opted into saving their circ history. In those cases, the user has
already consented to having this information saved and could have a more
enhanced experience with the recommendation engine. Others who were part
of the discussion could elaborate or correct me if I'm not articulating
the ideas correctly. The discussion can be found at
http://irc.evergreen-ils.org/evergreen/2014-09-25#i_126632.
In relation to genres, Vanya said:
> Maybe, as a solution to that, we can have a hierarchical algorithm for
> categorizing. In other words, we can allow the administrator to decide
> whether the categorization comes all the way down to genres, or just
> takes into account the overall weight of the user's awesome tag.
I like the idea of making this configurable, because there may be
systems where data identifying genre is a little more clear cut. Better
yet, how about if we allow an Evergreen site to define the categories
that are used. Some sites may use the MARC fixed fields for
fiction/non-fiction. Other sites may decided that values stored in the
655 MARC field work for them.
Is there something already exists in Evergreen that we could leverage
for this purpose? My first thought was MVF.
I do have one general recommendation speaking with my OPW admin hat on.
It really is a general recommendation for any of the OPW candidates who
might be following along. I mentioned in IRC today that I'm not a
developer, but I've managed a lot of development projects, and one thing
I try to watch out for is project creep. As we continue to talk about
the project and think of new configuration options to make it a more
flexible project, it can also become a very large project that isn't as
easy to manage.
Therefore, as you think through how you plan to implement the project, I
recommend breaking it up into distinct milestones. You might want to
start with smaller tasks as you ease into the project (e.g. collecting
the awesome tags and sending them along to the Awesome Box site), and
then move on to the larger components once you become more familiar with
the system.
Kathy
Kathy Lussier
Project Coordinator
Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative
(508) 343-0128
klussier at masslnc.org
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/kmlussier
#evergreen IRC: kmlussier
On 9/25/2014 6:40 PM, Tim Spindler wrote:
> Overall, I really like the ideas talked about but I agree with Terran
> that something would have to be done with circ data related to
> patrons. We use the purge function to anonymize our patron data but I
> could see other ways of dealing with this. We also have retention
> policies related to retaining patron circulation data.
>
> On Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 4:54 PM, Rogan Hamby
> <rogan.hamby at yclibrary.net <mailto:rogan.hamby at yclibrary.net>> wrote:
>
> I suppose I don't understand the concern on your part as at that
> level if someone could access the raw db they could just query
> someone's circulation history, fine payments, etc... since those
> are recorded as transactions unless you're doing something to
> anonymize or wipe those as soon as they're done. Even then
> someone could see all current transactions at that level.
>
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 4:33 PM, McCanna, Terran
> <tmccanna at georgialibraries.org
> <mailto:tmccanna at georgialibraries.org>> wrote:
>
> This relies on the circulation and rating data still being
> tied to the patron in the system, though - yes, it'd be on the
> database side and not on public view, but it's still creating
> a picture of a patron's reading history that has privacy
> implications. Of course, this feature should be set for
> systems to enable or disable, so that systems that are
> concerned about privacy simply won't turn it on. (PINES, for
> example, limits the retention of circulation history in the
> system as much as we can because of our privacy policies, so
> any feature that is linked to a patron's history would be
> unusable for us.)
>
> If ranking data were stored completely independently of the
> patron, then library systems would be able to use it without
> privacy concerns, and patrons wouldn't even need to be logged
> in to use it - but then it wouldn't be able to give
> completely customized recommendations to a specific patron,
> either. It's a definite tradeoff.
>
>
> Terran McCanna
> PINES Program Manager
> Georgia Public Library Service
> 1800 Century Place, Suite 150
> Atlanta, GA 30345
> 404-235-7138 <tel:404-235-7138>
> tmccanna at georgialibraries.org
> <mailto:tmccanna at georgialibraries.org>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Vanya Jauhal" <vanyajauhal at gmail.com
> <mailto:vanyajauhal at gmail.com>>
> To: "Evergreen Discussion Group"
> <open-ils-general at list.georgialibraries.org
> <mailto:open-ils-general at list.georgialibraries.org>>
> Sent: Thursday, September 25, 2014 3:41:02 PM
> Subject: Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Awesome Box Integration
>
>
>
> Hello Rogan
>
> This is exactly what I had in mind. All the recommendation
> processing will take place in background, and all the user
> will see is a recommendation and not the information of any
> other patron. This way his experience with Awesome Box will
> get enhanced.
>
>
> And yes, we can maybe, start off with some broad level genres,
> like, as you mentioned, fiction, non-fiction, documentaries,
> etc. Then, depending upon the infrastructure of the system and
> the response of that categorization, we can build upon the
> algorithm accordingly.
>
>
> You are right- it would be a big task in itself, but since the
> number of parameters involved are few and explicit, it gets
> simplified to an extent.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 26, 2014 at 12:50 AM, Rogan Hamby <
> rogan.hamby at yclibrary.net <mailto:rogan.hamby at yclibrary.net> >
> wrote:
>
>
>
> I don't see an issue with doing analysis of circulation
> patterns on the backend so long as nothing identifying is exposed.
>
>
> For example, if all I saw as a patron was a tab in my opac
> that said "you thought The Yiddish Policeman's Union was
> Awesome! Some others do did also thought this was Awesome ....
> " I don't see that as different from doing the same thing with
> circulations. It's not telling patrons even what the points of
> comparison were unless they only had a single item in their
> circulation history and even then it doesn't tell them how
> many other patrons, how much, etc....
>
>
> I'm dubious about subject headings also but wouldn't want to
> dismiss it out of hand. It might work. Without doing some
> experimenting I could see it going either way. Some fixed
> fields I could see working, like fiction and non-fiction. Age
> groups? Well, at least I can tell you I can't rely on those in
> my catalog. :)
>
>
> However, I also worry that reading recommendations based on
> circulation history could easily grow into a much more
> complicated task, especially depending on how we deliver those
> recommendations. Looking at a single boolean value tied to the
> user and item (circ table?) could still be quite a project by
> itself especially once all the useful bits and pieces are
> built in.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 2:37 PM, McCanna, Terran <
> tmccanna at georgialibraries.org
> <mailto:tmccanna at georgialibraries.org> > wrote:
>
>
> Agreed - it's a great idea in theory, but I'm not sure how
> well it would work in actual practice. Even in a single
> library, genre subject headings are usually pretty
> inconsistent in the MARC records because of copy cataloging,
> and that usually gets even more inconsistent in a consortium
> of libraries. Perhaps it could be partially weighted on genre
> subject headings, but not overly reliant on them? It might be
> worth considering the fixed field values for fiction vs.
> non-fiction and for age groups, too.
>
> I love the idea of providing recommendations based on other
> people that have similar taste ("other people that liked this
> book also liked these books...") but if the data is tied to
> actual patrons (and I'm not sure how it couldn't be) then
> quite a few library systems would face legal privacy issues
> and wouldn't be able to use it. We're currently using a
> commercial service to pull in reading recommendations because
> the recommendations can't be tied back to any of our patrons.
>
>
> Terran McCanna
> PINES Program Manager
> Georgia Public Library Service
> 1800 Century Place, Suite 150
> Atlanta, GA 30345
> 404-235-7138 <tel:404-235-7138>
> tmccanna at georgialibraries.org
> <mailto:tmccanna at georgialibraries.org>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Rogan Hamby" < rogan.hamby at yclibrary.net
> <mailto:rogan.hamby at yclibrary.net> >
> To: "Evergreen Discussion Group" <
> open-ils-general at list.georgialibraries.org
> <mailto:open-ils-general at list.georgialibraries.org> >
> Sent: Thursday, September 25, 2014 2:02:58 PM
> Subject: Re: [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Awesome Box Integration
>
>
> I can see some challenges to tracking genre and I'd be
> hesitant to put too much value on it. There are ways to
> catalog it but in my experience actually relying on it being
> in records (much less being consistent) is very unreliable in
> organizations that do a lot of copy cataloging / don't have
> centralized and controlled cataloging and there quite a few in
> that boat.
>
>
> That concern aside, I've always thought this would be a fun
> and potentially valuable thing to add.
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 1:44 PM, Vanya Jauhal <
> vanyajauhal at gmail.com <mailto:vanyajauhal at gmail.com> > wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Hello everyone
>
> I'm Vanya, from India. I'm a candidate for OPW Round9
> internship with evergreen.
>
> While discussing the idea of Awesome Box integration with
> Evergreen, Kathy and I discussed the possibility of making the
> Evergreen support for Awesome Box more interpretive using
> Artificial Intelligence.
>
> What if we could train the system to give weightage to
> people's "awesome" tags on items, depending upon how much
> their previous tags are appreciated by other people.
>
> For example: Let's say you tag a book to be awesome. Now, if
> 100 other people check that book in, and (lets say) 80 of them
> also tag it to be awesome- it will mean that your opinion
> matches a majority of people. On the other hand, if 100 other
> people check that book in and (say) only 5 of them tag it as
> awesome, this would mean that your awesome tag is not in
> coherence with the majority.
> So, in the former case, your awesome tag can be given more
> weightage as compared to the latter.
>
> Also, the weightage may vary according to genres. So- you may
> have a good taste in mystery books but your taste in classical
> literature might not be the same as the majority crowd. So-
> the weightage of your awesome tag in mystery would be higher
> than classical literature.
>
> We can even extend it to provide recommendations to users
> depending on their coherence with other users with similar taste.
>
> I am looking forward to your suggestions and feedback on this.
>
> Thank you for your time
>
> Vanya
>
>
>
>
> --
>
>
>
> Rogan Hamby, MLS, CCNP, MIA
> Managers Headquarters Library and Reference Services,
> York County Library System
>
>
> “You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long
> enough to suit me.”
> ― C.S. Lewis
>
>
>
>
> --
>
>
>
> Rogan Hamby, MLS, CCNP, MIA
> Managers Headquarters Library and Reference Services,
> York County Library System
>
>
> “You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long
> enough to suit me.”
> ― C.S. Lewis
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Rogan Hamby, MLS, CCNP, MIA
> Managers Headquarters Library and Reference Services,
> York County Library System
>
> “You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough
> to suit me.”
> ― C.S. Lewis <http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1069006.C_S_Lewis>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Tim Spindler
> tjspindler at gmail.com <mailto:tjspindler at gmail.com>
>
> *P** Go Green - **Save a tree! Please don't print this e-mail unless
> it's really necessary.*
>
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