« On the Herding of Cats, Mike Rylander | main | Library Data APIs Abound, Richard Wallis »
Smart Subjects, Tito Sierra
28 Feb 07
Smart Subjects: Application Independent Subject Recommendations
Tito Sierra
NCSU Libraries
Input user search query and spit out a list of related library subjects
based on search log analysis done as part of QuickSearch development
– found lots of topical subject queries
NCSU also provides browsable subject portal
– locally developed classification, approx. 100 subject nodes in 12 top-level catagories
– nodes influenced by local curriculum
– subject specialist mapped resources to the subject page
also based on OpenSearch
started with data from course catalogues to gather terms for mapping; also used text snippets from papers in faculty publications archive
– text extracts used to create search indexes
– run keyword search on the index; return, rank, dedupe results
– crosswalk to classification map
strengths
– application and collection independent
– subject recommendations can be integrated into any library search application
– broader, serendipitous resource discovery
weaknesses
– false positives (bad recommendations)
– zero hits
future plans
– database advisor
– increase size of subject indices using article tables of contents and backlog of course descriptions
– guage interest in a less-specialized release to the community
http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/dli/projects/smartsubjects
Posted by pzed on February 28, 2007 at 1.00pm
Categories: code4lib 2007, conferences, libraries
