Content-Based Book Recommending Using Learning for Text Categorization

Recommender systems improve access to relevant products and information by making personalized suggestions based on previous examples of a user's likes and dislikes. Most existing recommender systems use social filtering methods that base recommendations on other users' preferences. By contrast, content-based methods use information about an item itself to make suggestions. This approach has the advantage of being able to recommended previously unrated items to users with unique interests and to provide explanations for its recommendations. We describe a content-based book recommending system that utilizes information extraction and a machine-learning algorithm for text categorization. Initial experimental results demonstrate that this approach can produce accurate recommendations.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, Submission to Fourth ACM Conference on Digital Librarie

Advancing an indigenous ecology within LIS education

This article explores whether library and information science (LIS) education can incorporate an ethical learning environment based on indigenous worldview. Such a space is an indigenous ecology where relationships between people can be forged based on traditional knowledges. Connections between the indigenous ecology, information ethics, and social justice theory are drawn as a prelude to considering indigenous worldview. The protocols or behaviors and values within the ecological system are described. Indigenous perspectives on research methods are introduced, providing a background for considering approaches to study within the indigenous ecology. Finally, several case-specific examples are offered that illustrate features of the indigenous ecology. These features are mapped according to the concept of the medicine wheel/circle, acknowledging that various strengths and challenges are associated with the cardinal directions. The indigenous ecology provides a means for respecting diversity while reinterpreting strongly held professional values, such as those related to access to information.published or submitted for publicatio

Indigenous Everyday Life in Chatman’s Small World Theories

Indigenous communities are connected through their worldview or commonly held way of seeing everyday life. In this article we will describe the intersection, match, and mismatch of Chatman’s theories of information poverty, and life in the round and how these theories might be incorporated—or not—in understanding contemporary indigenous living. Within the theory of information poverty, we will consider Chatman’s four notions defining an impoverished lifeworld: secrecy, deception, risk taking, and situational relevance. Secrecy and deception might be interpreted as negatives by outsiders when boundaries are maintained around access to traditional cultural knowledge and its expression. Within the community, though, such behaviors are observances of protocol or expected behavior. Risk taking may be welcomed and applauded but might also result in the individual Native risk taker stepping into the interface frame of being an outsider, or someone who is now separated from their trial community. Relevance is contextual and is interpreted by indigenous peoples in terms of its ability to support tribal sovereignty. Chatman’s Theory of Life in the Round presents how individuals find fulfillment in their lives as understood through the concepts of worldview, societal norms, small worlds or settings, and the roles or social types to which people are assigned. These concepts can be seen in indigenous life as the connection to the land and clan kinship models. Our article will close within the framework of Cajete’s model of a fulfilled indigenous life as one where someone can find their true face, heart, and foundation. In this article we refer to the first or original peoples of the land as Native or Indigenous. We refer to first peoples living within the borders of the United States as American Indian or Indian. Indian Country is where Native people live and includes indigenous homeland areas including lands referred to as reservations. That said, Native people consider all land indigenous land. Together, our writing is based on decades of direct interaction with and observation of indigenous peoples from numerous tribal communities, our personal writing and review of the literature, as well as our own cultural affiliations and life backgrounds. Pre-print first published online 6/22/202

Building Bridges: Supporting and Creating Library Services for Indigenous Populations

Presentation slidesOpportunities exist to develop and support indigenous library services. These include a national reading club for Native children (“If I Can Read, I Can Do Anything”), library instruction models, virtual exhibits, support for public access computing (Native Bridge to WebJunction.org), scholarships (“Honoring Generations”), consulting with tribal community/public libraries, and international collaborations. This work is guided by the Anishinabe clan system and publications by Dr. Greg Cajete, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, and the Alaska Native Knowledge Network

Teaching the Catalog as a Reference Tool

Article in a column for "The Reference Librarian," Material-Mind-Method: On the Teaching of Reference. This article discusses teaching the catalog as a reference tool

Book Recommending Using Text Categorization with Extracted Information

Content-based recommender systems suggest documents, items, and services to users based on learning a profile of the user from rated examples containing information about the given items. Text categorization methods are very useful for this task but generally rely on unstructured text. We have developed a bookrecommending system that utilizes semi-structured information about items gathered from the web using simple information extraction techniques. Initial experimental results demonstrate that this approach can produce fairly accurate recommendations. Introduction There is a growing interest in recommender systems that suggest music, films, and other items and services to users (e.g. www.bignote.com, www.filmfinder.com) (Maes 1994; Resnik & Varian 1997). These systems generally make recommendations using a form of computerized matchmaking called collaborative filtering. The system maintains a database of the preferences of individual users, finds other users whose known preferenc..

Helping LIS Students Understand the Reference Librarian’s Teacher Identity

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Embracing diversity: What it means for new LIS professionals and the organizations that hire them

Our presentation will bring together a panel of diverse and global views on diversity from a broad set of racial, cultural, and geographic perspectives. While there is a growing body of research that supports the value of more diverse work environments, less is known about the conditions necessary to support the success of new LIS professionals that help diversify their work environments, what challenges library organizations face in inviting this diversity, and what can be done to best support these LIS professionals and their organizations

[[alternative]]Constructing a Culturally Responsive Virtual Museum Tour

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An Investigation of the Use of Weeding and Displays as Methods to Increase the Stock Turnover Rate in Small Public Libraries

267 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1987.An experiment was conducted in eight small public libraries in Illinois to test several techniques to increase adult circulation of books, a variation of stock turnover rate (STR) referred to as STR A/B.Three research hypotheses were proposed. First, weeding the collection will significantly increase STR A/B reducing total holdings and increasing circulation. Second, introducing multiple displays will not significantly increase STR A/B unless weeding is also used since displays displace circulation from other areas of the collection to the displayed items. Finally, the greatest increase in STR A/B will occur when both treatments are employed simultaneously.To test these hypotheses, one pair of libraries was weeded; 11 percent of the adult circulating book collection was placed in temporary storage. Two libraries introduced four to five displays of adult circulating books simultaneously. Both weeding and displays were organized in two libraries. The remaining two libraries served as controls and neither weeded nor used displays. The effect on STR A/B was monitored by recording library circulation and changes in library holdings.Weeding as a single treatment resulted in an average increase in STR A/B of 9 percent. Weeding and displays together increased STR A/B 23 percent. However, analysis of variance tests indicated that differences in STR A/B among the four groups of libraries were not significant. These findings indicate that none of the experimental treatments effectively increased STR A/B. The joint use of weeding and arranging book displays did significantly increase circulation and, thus, has the potential for increasing STR A/B. Paired t-tests indicated that circulation of particular books increased when the books were placed on display but book displays in themselves did not increase total circulation.Libraries that desire to increase the STR in their adult collection should, first, contemplate the usefulness of STR in in-house evaluation of performance. Libraries would do well to then (1) replicate and cross-validate these results by applying more stringent and continual weeding along with multiple displays and (2) explore other approaches to increasing STR.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD