Tag Archives: recommender
User Feedback Results – Super 8
In an effort to find the magic number the SALT team opened its testing labs again this week. Another 6 University of Manchester post graduate students spent the afternoon interrogating the Copac and John Rylands library catalogues to evaluate the … Continue reading
Final blog post
In this final post I’m going to sum up what this project has produced, potential next steps, key lessons learned, and what we’d pass on to others working in this area. In the last five months, the SALT project has … Continue reading
Lessons learned from the user evaluation perspective (or can we define the ‘long tail’?)
The key lesson we’ve learned during this project is that the assumptions behind the hypothesis of this project need to be reconsidered, as in this context the ‘long tail’ is complex and difficult to measure. Firstly how do we evaluate … Continue reading
What do the users think of the SALT recommender?
Following internal in house testing the recommender was open to the users. In the last week of July 18 humanities postgraduates passed through the SALT testing labs, (11 PhD students, 3 taught Masters students and 4 research students). Lisa and … Continue reading
Refining SALT (techie lessons learned)
While early tests with a sample set of data from JRUL were encouraging, see See SALT – a demo, an overhaul of the methodology behind the recommender API was required once the full set of loan transactions was obtained. It … Continue reading
A sampling of SALT. How the recommender is working and initial feedback from postgrads
We’re gearing up to meet with some of our collaborators tomorrow from the M25 consortium and Cambridge University Library; they’re helping us explore whether the model we’re developing for SALT (i.e. a centralised aggregation service & a shared API) is … Continue reading
See SALT – a demo
A further set of sample data from JRUL, comprising 100,000 loan transactions this time, has been processed and used to test a prototype web API. Signs are encouraging. The process begins with data being extracted from the Talis library management … Continue reading
But is this what the users want?
I’ll admit it, I’m prepared to out myself, I’ve just finished a post graduate research degree and more than once I have used the Amazon book recommender. In fact when I say more than once, possibly over the course of … Continue reading
Working through the SALT hypothesis
I’m currently project managing, SALT, but my own area of interest is evaluation and user behaviour – So I’m going to be taking on an active role in putting what we develop in front of the right users (we’re thinking … Continue reading
Surfacing the Academic Long Tail — Announcing new work with activity data
We’re pleased to announce that JISC has funded us to work on the SALT (Surfacing the Academic Long Tail) Project, which we’re undertaking with the University of Manchester, John Rylands University Library. Over the next six months the SALT project … Continue reading
