The University of Sheffield, in collaboration with OCLC Research, has been awarded funding from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council to explore a library catalogue recommender system based on the requirements and preferences of users.
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Recommender systems suggest items to users that are likely to be of interest to them but have not yet been considered. Sites like Amazon.com use similar systems to great effect.
The goal of the project is to follow a “user-centered” approach to the development of a library catalogue recommender system, establishing user needs and preferences before mining the bibliographic data within the WorldCat database to retrieve similar journals, books, digital media and video records that may be of interest. As the world's largest library catalogue, WorldCat allows the researchers to experiment with various, large-scale sources of evidence on which to base recommendations, thereby not restricting the recommender system to the holdings and circulation activities of a single institution.
"We are very pleased to see the collaboration between OCLC Research and the University of Sheffield result in this interesting shared project. We look forward to building on this success in ways that advance library practice and research," said Lorcan Dempsey, OCLC Chief Strategist and Vice President, OCLC Research.
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