personalization

It’s everywhere

(well, almost…)

idea

Leveraging Student Data To Personalize Your Library Web Site2011 LITA National Forum

Ian ChanWeb Development Librarian

California State University San Marcos

Pearl LyAccess Services & Emerging Technologies LibrarianPasadena City College

Personalization

Personalization is a process that ‘‘changes the functionality, interface, information content, or distinctiveness of a system to increase its personal relevance to an individual’’ (Blom, 2000, p. 313)

Related but different

Personalization is system-tailored

System reacts & interacts with user choices & data to suggest

layout & relevant content

(Sundar and Marathe, 2010)

Customization is user-tailored

Focus is on user selecting and maintaining layout and relevant content

when customization was king

2000 - 2008, Startpages & personal aggregators

Customization in libraries

MyLibrary (2000) Developed at NCSU & Notre Dame Also used by VCU, LeHigh, & others

MyLibrary – Univ. of Minn. Libraries, leverages campus CMS

National University of Singapore – Nexus (CMS)

Karolinska Institutet University Library – Drupal

PennPortal – Libraries – campus CMS

Galter Health Sciences Library – self-developed?

Many of these links found via Aaron Tay’s 2010-06 blog post titled “Customizable library portal pages”

the move to data-driven personalization

(or tributaries of user data)

Almost every site asks if I want to connect with Facebook!

Users are growing used to data sharing

Amazon beta-testing Facebook integration for its recommendations system

Live.com (Microsoft), Foursquare, Goodreads

Yahoo, CNN, Bing

what does this mean for libraries?

Students want smart systems

“Student and faculty groups both expressed a desire for systems that know the individual better and that behave “more like Amazon” in remembering who they are, what they like, and where they left off in their work. ” (McGee and Carmean, 2006)

Assessment of a library portal

Galter Health Sciences Library studied the use of their portal from 2003-2008

“Registration data indicated that users were receptive to personalized resource selection and that the automated application of specialty-based, personalized HSLs was more frequently adopted than manual customization by users. “

(Shedlock et al., 2010)

personalization & the California State University San Marcos

Library web site

first, the context

What we’d like our site to do …

Help users get to information effectively

Offer interactive feedback and social tools to our users

Humanize the library and focus on our people

Personalize the research experience

Offer personal assistance through multiple channels

To do those things, we’ve …

Developed a sustainable, modern design

Developed user-friendly information architecture and navigation

Set up multiple feedback & assessment tools

Integrated “Web 2.0” functions – FB, tweet, etc.

Implemented modern content management framework

Personalize our site

Basic implementation criteria

Re-use existing user data feed from campus enrollment system

Minimize what the user has to do: no account creation

no selection of subjects required

Integrate login with EZproxy authentication and campus LDAP directory

We’re using…

Drupal

Limited amount of PHP custom programming for… cross-referencing subjects with user course selections generating XML feeds to share Library a la Carte data looking-up course reserve listings

ILS data export Data is from campus enrollment management system

Prepping the data

Small PHP script to analyze course data and course reference with subject list

Data configuration requires about a half hour of staff time for each load

Data load occurs once a week

How Drupal answered our needs

How do we relate users with resources?

CCK [content types]

User Profile

Views[queries]

Database

TaxonomySimilar by

Terms

Guide

Panels[layout]

Personalized Pages

Content Profile

Blue = Drupal modulesGreen = content types

After login, users can flag databases as favorites

Additional Screenshots

• …are available by going to:

http://www.diigo.com/list/ianchan/lita2011

How do we load user data?

User Import

Batch import basic account info

Node Import & Node Import Update

Batch import & update user profile data

Note: Authorized campus users who are not in the batch loads can still sign-in and system will auto-create their account

InterestsAccountsAuthentication

How do we load the user data & manage user profiles?

User Profile

User Import

LDAP Integration

Campus LDAP

User Data

Node Import

User Account

Recommendations

Ezproxy Integration

Blue = Drupal modulesGreen = user info objects

Assessment

Click tracking – CrazyEgg

Web Analytics – GA, Piwik

Drupal Internal Tracking

4 days into test, we inserted the “Sign-in to access databases…” help bubble and login

button clicks jumped significantly…

Key issues to resolve

• Automate additional steps in the transfer of user data from one system to the next

• Integrate ILS and ILLiad login and item information (maybe XC’s NCIP module?)

Upcoming developments

• Integrate course reserves

• Allow users to see their last-used & most-used resources

• Provide dynamic, course-specific library widgets to learning management system

• Integrate saved articles from Zotero, Mendeley, and/or discovery tool?

• Link users with classmates and faculty?

More ideas to think about

Perhaps public libraries should make greater use of patron checkout data?

Collaborate with Goodreads or LibraryThing to leverage user data for local users

Discussion / Q&A

Questions & insights from the audience

Privacy statement is really important (multiple comments)

Or is it?

How about integration with LMS?

If you screen-scrape, check scraped data for security

Try Open Hallway for accessibility testing

References

S. Shyam Sundar and Sampada Marathe, “Personalization versus Customization: The Importance of Agency, Privacy, and Power Usage.,” Human Communication Research 36, no. 3 (2010): 298-322.

Jan Blom, “Personalization: a taxonomy” Proceedings of the CHI 2000 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems . The Hague, Netherlands, April 1-6, 2000. 313-314. http://www.win.tue.nl/~laroyo/2L340/resources/personalisation_taxonomy.pdf

James Shedlock et al., “Case Study: the Health SmartLibrary Experiences in Web Personalization and Sustomization at the Galter Health Sciences Library, Northwestern University,” Journal of the Medical Library Association: JMLA 98 (2010): 98-104, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2859266/.

Ali Jafari, Patricia McGee, and Colleen Carmean, “Managing Courses Defining Learning: What Faculty, Students, and Administrators Want,” EDUCAUSE Review 41, no. 4 (2006): 50-70, http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/detail?accno=EJ745839.