Open AccessIf we build it, will they come? Recommendations and WorldCat
Author(s) -
Wakeling Simon,
Sen Barbara,
Clough Paul,
Connaway Lynn Silipigni
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
proceedings of the american society for information science and technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1550-8390
pISSN - 0044-7870
DOI - 10.1002/meet.2011.14504801289
Subject(s) - recommender system , computer science , world wide web , context (archaeology) , key (lock) , domain (mathematical analysis) , library classification , information system , data science , knowledge management , engineering , computer security , paleontology , mathematical analysis , mathematics , electrical engineering , biology
This paper reports on a collaborative research project currently underway between the University of Sheffield's Information School and OCLC, the goal of which is to produce a recommender system for WorldCat.org – the publically accessible aggregated catalogue of the holdings of OCLC's member libraries. It highlights two of the key issues facing recommender systems design in the library domain: 1) Trust: users' trust both in the system itself and in collaboratively generated suggestions; and 2) Context: the difficulties of a system adapting to the huge range of information‐seeking contexts that accompany a diverse user base. The paper describes how future qualitative and quantitative research will attempt to address these issues, and produce a system that best serves users of WorldCat.org . It is hoped that as well as contributing to recommender systems research in general, the results of this project will help inform debates relating to the interaction between users and systems in a library context.