Re: [CODE4LIB] Question re: ranking and FRBR
On 4/12/06, K.G. Schneider [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Do users actually determine relevance or do they have faith in Google to provide the best results on the first results page? I'd say people use a click and try n times, before refine search until relevance is fulfilled technique. But again, this is *totally* dependant on what they're searching for; known or unknown ; - books by Frank Herbert (specific enough to get some results) - Jungs philosophy in fiction (general enough to cause bleeds) - good SciFi (general enough to cause bleeding) - oil crisis metaphors (specific and general at the same time) All of the above can lead to Dune by Frank Herbert. What is it's relevance to the above searches? It's a book by Herbert, it certainly contains Jungs philosophy, it's a good SciFi book, and has indeed the metaphors as part of its concept. And to top it all, it's still a popular book. So I could say The Dosadi Experiment and all the same is true, except the popularity. Who is to say that former is preferred over the latter? Google will give us the former, never the latter. For libraries, this is an interesting problem to solve, because popularity, at least in my view, is mostly a misnomer in searching for information. Popularity in Google is measured by people actually putting in the links, which means they point to something *because* there is something interesting that way. In the library catalogs there is no such thing. We've got an experiment running here which uses tags to do this last bit for us; people and librarians alike can tag books which will boost their ratings. An anonymous tag denotes popularity (unless stated otherwise), while a reference librarian boosts importance. Another fields I'm digging into is using search term logs to do some of this as well, generating heat for items ... close to popular, but can be very time-based (unlike links which stays around) if you don't feed the flame, it eventually will die out (or in this case, repurposed). Anyways, just a few thoughts and ideas. Alex -- Ultimately, all things are known because you want to believe you know. - Frank Herbert __ http://shelter.nu/ __
Re: [CODE4LIB] Question re: ranking and FRBR
On Apr 11, 2006, at 4:11 PM, Colleen Whitney wrote: Jonathan Rochkind wrote: not the right approach. And yet...I wish I could explain why it seems as though the clustering can tell us something. Well, what is it you think the clustering can tell you something _about_? This is an interesting topic to me. I'm not sure the clustering can tell you anything about relevance to the user. I'm not seeing it. I mean, the number of items that are members of a FRBR work set really just indicates how many 'versions' (to be imprecise) of that work exist. But the number of 'versions' of a work that exist doesn't really predict how likely that work (or any of it's versions) is to be of interest to a user, does it? But maybe you're thinking of something I'm missing, I'm curious what you're thinking about. Yes, that's exactly what I'm stuck on. If more important or more popular works tend to have more manifestations, then there might be some signal as to probability of relevance in there. Which could be factored in (in some *small* way). But I'm not sure whether/how one would test that if. At the moment you have me convinced that it's a red herring. Perhaps there is something useful about grouping and highlighting works that have a large number of manifestations. My gut tells me that this would be more useful for a general audience than for specialized researchers. But you don't necessarily have to factor this into your default search relevance algorithm to expose it. Just speculating, but could one use the term classics to describe works with an exceeding large number of manifestations? Maybe this could be a useful post-search sort option. Or maybe you can define a high-manifestation threshold for your collection... if the user's search term matches any of these items, they are highlighted on the search results page in a separate bucket. Perhaps some people would appreciate such a filtering service. This may also apply for other specialized search needs. Rather than complicate (dilute?) your relevance algorithm by adding in factors of relevance only to a particular audience, why not develop targeted discovery services that complement the search results? Tito Sierra
Re: [CODE4LIB] Question re: ranking and FRBR
Right. The observation had more to do with how to order the items within a workset. The visitor was suggesting that a combination of popularity and currency ought to be considered for determining display. So between titles, you could show those titles that were more widely held first. Then within titles, you could show the most recent edition of the title at the top -- independent of the number of holdings associated with that particular edition. In answer to a question from yesterday, I'd wager (since we are doing armchair usability) that factoring in the number of manifestations of an item *would* make a difference. You'd probably have to do it at query time, but for the concerns I've heard about catalog records changing, conditional results for date sets seems valuable. Karen G. Schneider [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [CODE4LIB] Question re: ranking and FRBR
On 4/12/06, Jonathan Rochkind [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If you are instead using a formula where an increased number of records for a given work increases your ranking, all other things being equal---I'm skeptical. Ditto; I think the answer to this is that there needs to be some serious pre-processing and analysis to come up with some really smarts in terms of these searches. I don't think there is an easy way out once you've gone past the ooh, shiny stage of whatever context you bring the user; good or bad context? Alex -- Ultimately, all things are known because you want to believe you know. - Frank Herbert __ http://shelter.nu/ __
Re: [CODE4LIB] Question re: ranking and FRBR
Although, at the same time, I think Google has taught us that our result set order doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be 'relatively accurate' and present enough information to let the user determine its relevance. I think a dependence on technology to 'solve this problem' is more complicated than necessary. Humans tend to be adaptable and (within reason) fault tolerant. -Ross. On 4/11/06, Alexander Johannesen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 4/12/06, Jonathan Rochkind [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If you are instead using a formula where an increased number of records for a given work increases your ranking, all other things being equal---I'm skeptical. Ditto; I think the answer to this is that there needs to be some serious pre-processing and analysis to come up with some really smarts in terms of these searches. I don't think there is an easy way out once you've gone past the ooh, shiny stage of whatever context you bring the user; good or bad context? Alex -- Ultimately, all things are known because you want to believe you know. - Frank Herbert __ http://shelter.nu/ __
Re: [CODE4LIB] Question re: ranking and FRBR
Although, at the same time, I think Google has taught us that our result set order doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be 'relatively accurate' and present enough information to let the user determine its relevance. Do users actually determine relevance or do they have faith in Google to provide the best results on the first results page? Karen G. Schneider [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [CODE4LIB] Question re: ranking and FRBR
Here at OCLC we're ranking based on the holdings of all the records in the retrieved work set. Seems to work pretty well. --Th -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Colleen Whitney Sent: Monday, April 10, 2006 1:06 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] Question re: ranking and FRBR Hello all, Here's a question for anyone who has been thinking about or working with FRBR for creating record groupings for display. (Perhaps others have already discussed or addressed this...in which case I'd be happy to have a pointer to resources that are already out there.) In a retrieval environment that presents ranked results (ranked by record content, optionally boosted by circulation and/or holdings), how could/should FRBR-like record groupings be factored into ranking? Several approaches have been discussed here: - Rank the results using the score from the highest-scoring record in a group - Use the sum of scores of documents in a group (this seems to me to place too much weight on the group) - Use the log of the sum of the scores of documents in a group I'd be very interested in knowing whether others have already been thinking about this Regards, --Colleen Whitney
Re: [CODE4LIB] Question re: ranking and FRBR
Thanks...is it just a straight sum, Thom? --C Hickey,Thom wrote: Here at OCLC we're ranking based on the holdings of all the records in the retrieved work set. Seems to work pretty well. --Th -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Colleen Whitney Sent: Monday, April 10, 2006 1:06 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] Question re: ranking and FRBR Hello all, Here's a question for anyone who has been thinking about or working with FRBR for creating record groupings for display. (Perhaps others have already discussed or addressed this...in which case I'd be happy to have a pointer to resources that are already out there.) In a retrieval environment that presents ranked results (ranked by record content, optionally boosted by circulation and/or holdings), how could/should FRBR-like record groupings be factored into ranking? Several approaches have been discussed here: - Rank the results using the score from the highest-scoring record in a group - Use the sum of scores of documents in a group (this seems to me to place too much weight on the group) - Use the log of the sum of the scores of documents in a group I'd be very interested in knowing whether others have already been thinking about this Regards, --Colleen Whitney
Re: [CODE4LIB] Question re: ranking and FRBR
We're doing straight sums of the holdings of all the manifestations in the work. It's hard for me to see the need to discount holdings in multiple manifestations. It does mean that 'bible' tends to come to the top for many searches, but that's about the only work-set I see coming up unexpectedly to the top. If we had circulation data we'd certainly factor that in (or maybe just use it if it was comprehensive enough). --Th -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Colleen Whitney Sent: Monday, April 10, 2006 2:04 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Question re: ranking and FRBR Thanks...is it just a straight sum, Thom? --C Hickey,Thom wrote: Here at OCLC we're ranking based on the holdings of all the records in the retrieved work set. Seems to work pretty well. --Th -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Colleen Whitney Sent: Monday, April 10, 2006 1:06 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] Question re: ranking and FRBR Hello all, Here's a question for anyone who has been thinking about or working with FRBR for creating record groupings for display. (Perhaps others have already discussed or addressed this...in which case I'd be happy to have a pointer to resources that are already out there.) In a retrieval environment that presents ranked results (ranked by record content, optionally boosted by circulation and/or holdings), how could/should FRBR-like record groupings be factored into ranking? Several approaches have been discussed here: - Rank the results using the score from the highest-scoring record in a group - Use the sum of scores of documents in a group (this seems to me to place too much weight on the group) - Use the log of the sum of the scores of documents in a group I'd be very interested in knowing whether others have already been thinking about this Regards, --Colleen Whitney
Re: [CODE4LIB] Question re: ranking and FRBR
I'd agree with this. Actually, though, 'relevancy' ranking based on where terms occur in the record and how many times they occur is of minor help compared to some sort of popularity score. WorldCat holdings work fairly well for that, as should circulation data. The primary example of this sort of ranking is the web search engines where ranking is based primarily on word proximity and links. --Th When we talk about what is or what is not working well, it would be useful to provide some evidence-driven data to support those statements. I'm pro FRBR but if it's going to catch on, it's time to take FRBR past the world of assumptions, both in terms of proof of concept and in terms of debates about what kind of configuration does or does not work well. Karen G. Schneider [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [CODE4LIB] Question re: ranking and FRBR
The only tricky thing about this with WorldCat, though, is that you have such a large mix of libraries. In my own searching on WorldCat, I've noticed that a fair amount of fiction and non-scholarly works appear near the top of results because the public libraries are skewing the holdings of those titles. Not a bad thing in itself, if that's what I'm looking for, but our students are looking for scholarly works (and still learning to distinguish scholarly from not), so would be nice in our particular context to limit only to academic libraries that own the title. --Dave = David Walker Web Development Librarian Library, Cal State San Marcos 760-750-4379 http://public.csusm.edu/dwalker = -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Hickey,Thom Sent: Monday, April 10, 2006 12:52 PM To: CODE4LIB@listserv.nd.edu Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Question re: ranking and FRBR I'd agree with this. Actually, though, 'relevancy' ranking based on where terms occur in the record and how many times they occur is of minor help compared to some sort of popularity score. WorldCat holdings work fairly well for that, as should circulation data. The primary example of this sort of ranking is the web search engines where ranking is based primarily on word proximity and links. --Th -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jonathan Rochkind Sent: Monday, April 10, 2006 3:16 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Question re: ranking and FRBR When you are ranking on number of holdings like OCLC is, a straight sum makes sense to me---the sum of all libraries holding copies of any manifestation of the FRBR work is indeed the sum of the holdings for all the records in the FRBR work set. Of course. If you're doing relavancy rankings instead though, a straight sum makes less sense. A relevancy ranking isn't really amenable to being summed. The sum of the relevancy rankings for various manifestations/expressions is not probably not a valid indicator of how relevant the work is to the user, right? And if you did it this way, it would tend to make the most _voluminous_ work always come out first as the most 'relevant', which isn't quite right.---This isn't quite the same problem as OCLC's having the bible come out on top---since OCLC is ranking by holdings, it's exactly right to have the bible come out on top, the Bible is indeed surely one of the (#1?) most held works, so it's quite right for it to be on top. But the bible isn't always going to be the most relevant result for a user, just because it's the most voluminous! Summing is going to mess up your relevancy rankings. Just using the maximum relevancy ranking from the work set seems acceptable to me--the work's relevancy to the user is indicated by the most relevant manifestation in the set. There might be a better way to do it (Is a work with four manifestations with a relevancy ranking .7 more relevant than a work with just one manifestation with a ranking of .9? I don't think it probably is, actually; I think just taking the maximum should work fine. But it depends on the relevancy algorithm maybe.). I don't think I'm enough of a mathematician to understand the point of the log of the sum, though, hmm. --Jonathan At 2:38 PM -0400 4/10/06, Hickey,Thom wrote: We're doing straight sums of the holdings of all the manifestations in the work. It's hard for me to see the need to discount holdings in multiple manifestations. It does mean that 'bible' tends to come to the top for many searches, but that's about the only work-set I see coming up unexpectedly to the top. If we had circulation data we'd certainly factor that in (or maybe just use it if it was comprehensive enough). --Th -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Colleen Whitney Sent: Monday, April 10, 2006 2:04 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Question re: ranking and FRBR Thanks...is it just a straight sum, Thom? --C Hickey,Thom wrote: Here at OCLC we're ranking based on the holdings of all the records in the retrieved work set. Seems to work pretty well. --Th -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Colleen Whitney Sent: Monday, April 10, 2006 1:06 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: [CODE4LIB] Question re: ranking and FRBR Hello all, Here's a question for anyone who has been thinking about or working with FRBR for creating record groupings for display. (Perhaps others have already discussed or addressed this...in which case I'd be happy to have a pointer to resources that are already out there.) In a retrieval environment that presents ranked results (ranked by record content, optionally boosted by circulation and/or holdings), how could/should FRBR-like record groupings be factored into ranking? Several
Re: [CODE4LIB] Question re: ranking and FRBR
Actually we've been experimenting with 'audience level' (http://www.oclc.org/research/projects/audience/) which attempts to address that, based on what type of libraries hold the items. It should help, but again, this is new and we don't have much more than anecdotal evidence so far, and how to work it into a user interface may be a challenge. The latest thinking is that it may make sense to have three categories: juvenile, general, and specialized. --Th -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of David Walker Sent: Monday, April 10, 2006 4:06 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Question re: ranking and FRBR The only tricky thing about this with WorldCat, though, is that you have such a large mix of libraries. In my own searching on WorldCat, I've noticed that a fair amount of fiction and non-scholarly works appear near the top of results because the public libraries are skewing the holdings of those titles. Not a bad thing in itself, if that's what I'm looking for, but our students are looking for scholarly works (and still learning to distinguish scholarly from not), so would be nice in our particular context to limit only to academic libraries that own the title. --Dave = David Walker Web Development Librarian Library, Cal State San Marcos 760-750-4379 http://public.csusm.edu/dwalker = -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Hickey,Thom Sent: Monday, April 10, 2006 12:52 PM To: CODE4LIB@listserv.nd.edu Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Question re: ranking and FRBR I'd agree with this. Actually, though, 'relevancy' ranking based on where terms occur in the record and how many times they occur is of minor help compared to some sort of popularity score. WorldCat holdings work fairly well for that, as should circulation data. The primary example of this sort of ranking is the web search engines where ranking is based primarily on word proximity and links. --Th -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jonathan Rochkind Sent: Monday, April 10, 2006 3:16 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Question re: ranking and FRBR When you are ranking on number of holdings like OCLC is, a straight sum makes sense to me---the sum of all libraries holding copies of any manifestation of the FRBR work is indeed the sum of the holdings for all the records in the FRBR work set. Of course. If you're doing relavancy rankings instead though, a straight sum makes less sense. A relevancy ranking isn't really amenable to being summed. The sum of the relevancy rankings for various manifestations/expressions is not probably not a valid indicator of how relevant the work is to the user, right? And if you did it this way, it would tend to make the most _voluminous_ work always come out first as the most 'relevant', which isn't quite right.---This isn't quite the same problem as OCLC's having the bible come out on top---since OCLC is ranking by holdings, it's exactly right to have the bible come out on top, the Bible is indeed surely one of the (#1?) most held works, so it's quite right for it to be on top. But the bible isn't always going to be the most relevant result for a user, just because it's the most voluminous! Summing is going to mess up your relevancy rankings. Just using the maximum relevancy ranking from the work set seems acceptable to me--the work's relevancy to the user is indicated by the most relevant manifestation in the set. There might be a better way to do it (Is a work with four manifestations with a relevancy ranking .7 more relevant than a work with just one manifestation with a ranking of .9? I don't think it probably is, actually; I think just taking the maximum should work fine. But it depends on the relevancy algorithm maybe.). I don't think I'm enough of a mathematician to understand the point of the log of the sum, though, hmm. --Jonathan At 2:38 PM -0400 4/10/06, Hickey,Thom wrote: We're doing straight sums of the holdings of all the manifestations in the work. It's hard for me to see the need to discount holdings in multiple manifestations. It does mean that 'bible' tends to come to the top for many searches, but that's about the only work-set I see coming up unexpectedly to the top. If we had circulation data we'd certainly factor that in (or maybe just use it if it was comprehensive enough). --Th -Original Message- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Colleen Whitney Sent: Monday, April 10, 2006 2:04 PM To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Question re: ranking and FRBR Thanks...is it just a straight sum, Thom? --C Hickey,Thom wrote: Here at OCLC we're ranking based on the holdings of all the records in the retrieved work set. Seems to work pretty well. --Th -Original Message
