Is this the one that we've committed to funding? On Wed, Jan 28, 2015 at 4:59 PM, Kathy Lussier <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi all, > > A few months ago, MassLNC put out a call for development partners to help > fund a project that would add an activity metric for Evergreen's relevance > ranking. We temporarily put this project on the back burner while we > focused on some other development projects, but this is something we would > love to see implemented in Evergreen sometime soon. > > Popularity is something that Amazon and Google use with great success when > retrieving search results, and I think it would work well with Evergreen > too. Consider the following scenario: > > Let's say you have a patron looking for a book on General Patton that they > just heard about on the radio. If they were to do a search for "george > patton" in Amazon, the New York Times bestseller "Killing Patton" appears > high in search results because Amazon has data saying it is a top seller > and incorporates this information in its relevance ranking algorithm. > > On the other hand, when I do the same search in the C/W MARS catalog, > "Killing Patton" does not appear on the first page of results, despite the > fact that this title is number 35 on the consortium's list of most > requested titles at this time. The reason this happens is because the > factors that influence Evergreen's relevance ranking are all related to the > words found in the bib record. The words in the bib record are important, > of course, but they don't always tell the entire story. Our hope is that an > activity metric will provide that extra bit of information to search and > help titles like "Killing Patton" float to the top of search results lists > at times when a lot of users are looking for those titles. > > Holds and circulation activity, item ownership counts, and other item > attributes, such as copy location or circ modifiers, can be used to define > popularity. For example, you could say titles with a certain number of > holds or circulations over time could be identified as more active for the > purposes of relevance ranking, but you could also say titles in a hot > titles copy location or a reserves copy location (in academic libraries), > should also be identified as more active. > > We have a proposal from Equinox to do the work, but we do need help in > funding the project. If you have any interest in helping us move this > project forward, feel free to contact me directly and I can forward along > more details about the project. > > Thank you! > Kathy > > > -- > Kathy Lussier > Project Coordinator > Massachusetts Library Network Cooperative > (508) 343-0128 > [email protected] > Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/kmlussier > > -- Ruth Frasur Director of the Historic(ally Awesome) Hagerstown - Jefferson Township Library 10 W. College Street in Hagerstown, Indiana (47346) p (765) 489-5632; f (765) 489-5808 Our Kickin' Website <http://hagerstownlibrary.org> Our Rockin' Facebook Page <http://facebook.com/hjtplibrary> and Stuff I'm Reading <http://pinterest.com/hjtplibrary/ruth-reads/>
