A sophisticated library search strategy using folksonomies and similarity matching

Abstract

Libraries, private and public, offer valuable resources to library patrons. As of today, the only way to locate information archived exclusively in libraries is through their catalogs. Library patrons, however, often find it difficult to formulate a proper query, which requires using specific keywords assigned to different fields of desired library catalog records, to obtain relevant results. These improperly formulated queries often yield irrelevant results or no results at all. This negative experience in dealing with existing library systems turns library patrons away from directly querying library catalogs; instead, they rely on Web search engines to perform their searches first, and upon obtaining the initial information (e.g., titles, subject headings, or authors) on the desired library materials, they query library catalogs. This searching strategy is an evidence of failure of today's library systems. In solving this problem, we propose an enhanced library system, which allows partial, similarity matching of (a) tags defined by ordinary users at a folksonomy site that describe the content of books and (b) unrestricted keywords specified by an ordinary library patron in a query to search for relevant library catalog records. The proposed library system allows patrons posting a query Q using commonly used words and ranks the retrieved results according to their degrees of resemblance with Q while maintaining the query processing time comparable with that achieved by current library search engines.

The normal distribution in LibraryThing: investigation on the combined literature of fifteen books

“…In other words, LT is a tool of social networking and communication based on stored information (catalogue of a personal library). Communication by using the collective information determines the dialog based on the content of the books and the promotion of recommended books to others (Pera et al, 2009;Starr, 2007). In respect to this system's possibilities, the present research attempted to examine other aspects relating to books' recommendations.…”

Folksonomies in the library: their impact on user experience, and their implications for the work of librarians

“…They claim that this system reduced zero-hits results and improved the relevance of returns, outperforming many commercial ILSs (Pera et al 2009(Pera et al , 1405(Pera et al -1406.…”

“…A final application for folksonomies is described by Pera, Lund and Ng (2009, 1302-1406, who developed EnLiS, a library system which, they claim, improves user searches by using folksonomies to perform similarity matches between keywords in the query and user tags from LibraryThing. They claim that this system reduced zero-hits results and improved the relevance of returns, outperforming many commercial ILSs (Pera et al 2009(Pera et al , 1405(Pera et al -1406.…”

A tangle of tags: The impact of user‐generated tagging in public library catalogs

“…Pera, Lund, and Yiu‐Kai (2009) assert the deficiencies of the traditional library catalog and present their own enhanced library catalog, EnLibS, the goals of which are to limit failed searches, order results by degree of relevance, and maintain processing time to stay compatible with library search engines (p. 1393). The results of Pera et al (2009) indicate that the use of ‘word correlation factors and folksonomies to perform similarity matches’ was much more successful and “(a) significantly reduces zero‐hits query results and (b) highly ranks relevant library records … while maintaining the query‐processing time comparable to that of existing library search engines” (p. 1405).…”

“…While Pera et al (2009) suggest an entirely new library catalog that incorporates folksonomies and controlled vocabularies, Merc̆un and Z̆umer (2008) detail the issues libraries have in continuing to keep the online catalog relevant through attempts to make the library catalog “next generation” (p. 243). As Merc̆un and Z̆umer (2008) articulate, “changes on the web influenced users' mental models, their expectations, behavior and strategies when using online library catalogues” (p. 245).…”