I Know What You Borrowed Last SummerExploiting Usage Data in an Academic Library

Dave Pattern

Library Systems Manager

University of Huddersfield, UK

d.c.pattern@hud.ac.uk

www.daveyp.com

Preamble

• More information about this presentation…– daveyp.com/ili2009/

• Please remix and reuse these slides!– creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0

• Have you remembered to switch your phone on?– please feel free take photos, record audio, live blog,

tweet (@daveyp, #ili2009), etc

University of Huddersfield Library

• Medium sized UK University– 20,000 students and 2,000 staff– Library holds over 240,000 books

• Current LMS/ILS Horizon installed in 1996– over 3 million borrowing (“circ”)

transactions stored in the DB

Suggestions based on circ data“people who borrowed this…”

Borrowing profileaverage loans per month

0

5000

10000

15000

20000

25000

30000

35000

Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

average number of book loans per month

0

1000

2000

3000

4000

Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

average number of clicks per month on “people who borrowed this” suggestions

Feature usage“people who borrowed this…”

Getting personal!suggestions for what to borrow next

Building better new book listscourse specific RSS feeds

40000

50000

60000

70000

80000

90000

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

number of unique titles (bib#) borrowed per calendar year (2009 figure is predicted)

?

The impact on borrowingrange of stock borrowed per year

borrowing suggestions added to catalogue at start of 2006

average number of books borrowed per active borrower per calendar year (2009 predicted)

The impact on borrowingaverage number of books borrowed

13

14

15

16

17

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

Catalogue keyword searcheskeyword cloud eye candy…

Catalogue keyword searchesguided searches

• http://library.hud.ac.uk/usagedata/– prompted by the JISC Tile Project– aggregated usage data for 2 million circulation

transactions, covering around 80,000 book titles– recommendation data for over 37,000 titles– simple XML format– Open Data Commons / CC0 licence

Library usage data release“if you love something, set it free…”

• Data released on 12th Dec 2008…

• …2 days later, Patrick Murray-John at University of Mary Washington converts the data to RDF! – Patrick’s blog post at http://bit.ly/noJD– Talis podcast at http://bit.ly/z6yjF

Library usage data release“if you love something, set it free…”

Library usage data release“if you love something, set it free…”

JISC MOSAIC Projecthttp://bit.ly/jiscmosaic

JISC MOSAIC Projectdeveloper competition

JISC MOSAIC Projectdeveloper competition

JISC MOSAIC Projectdeveloper competition

In summary…

• At Huddersfield, exploited usage data is helping to change borrowing habits

• Are libraries prepared to let go of their data?

• “Raw data now!” – Sir Tim Berners-Lee– TED speech, March 2009 (http://bit.ly/q9sR)

Final recommendations…

• Capture as much usage data as you can …even if you don’t have a use for it now!

• Whenever possible, release aggregated or anonymised versions of the data– try to use a Creative Commons Zero or Open Data

Commons licence to encourage re-use– don’t be a “data hugger”!