| Andreas Geyer-Schulz Professor Universität Karlsruhe (TH) |
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The recommender service BibTip is a value-added service which extends the functionality of libary online public access catalogs (OPAC) with automatically generated recommendations based on the statistical analysis of observed user behavior. For the users of a scientific library the service recommends books (or any object in the library) which are closely related to the books/objects the user is currently inspecting in the OPAC. These recommendations often are of high value to users, especially in very narrow and specialized domains. The service complements and helps reference librarians when consulting with students or researchers. In addition, because it is behavior-based, the service is completely language-independent and it works for digital objects of arbitrary media type. The service has been operating 24 hours a day and 7 days a week at the library of the Universität Karlsruhe (TH) since 2001. In ongoing evaluations, it consistently ranked between 4 and 5 with more than 900 students, researchers and librarians at Karlsruhe on a 5 point scale with 5 denoting the best ranking.
Recently, the system has been improved in its scalability and robustness. Because of its minimal interface, it can be easily integrated as a service in Web-OPACs. Since spring 2007, the service has been successfully integrated in meta-library catalogs (e.g. the Karlsruher Virtueller Katalog (KVK), OPACs of library networks (e.g. SWB) and of larger libraries (e.g. Badische Landesbibliothek), but also in small departmental libraries (e.g. at the Institute of Information Engineering and Management of the Universität Karlsruhe [TH]). A rollout to more than 10 major libraries in Germany is in progress until the end of 2007.
A survey of the project including the system architecture, the statistical models and their scientific roots, and the service integration into Web OPACs will be given in the presentation. The development of a global service infrastructure and service organization will be sketched and its implementability will be discussed.
http://www.em.uni-karlsruhe.de/research/projects/reckvk/index.php?id=Participate!
http://www.ubka.uni-karlsruhe.de/hylib/suchmaske.html
http://www.bibtip.org/
Handout (MS Word)