An ingenious widget that shows library usage data in terms of stars, meteors and constellations has won a JISC-funded library statistics competition.
When JISC launched a competition for developers to create widgets (plug-in applications) that would benefit students and library users, it was flooded with innovative entries. Submissions included an application that suggests a course based on the books the user has enjoyed reading, a facility for users to share their reading list with others, a way of finding out which books students on a given course have taken out, as well as how much money they have saved by using the library to borrow the books rather than buy them.
But the judges, looking for an innovative approach to presenting library data, found the winner in a widget that represents the figures for the everyday use of a university library in a galactic format.
All the contestants were provided with the same data by the University of Huddersfield and told to develop a useful statistical tool for it. The eventual winner, undergraduate computer scientist Alex Parker, created an imaginative “book galaxy” showing books as stars in a galaxy of library resources accessed by University of Huddersfield students and staff. His Book Galaxy Applet is a new way of searching for books in a library, where the user can browse over books in a way that doesn’t involve pages of book listings.
Parker, who is a student at the University of Southampton, says: “I think that doing a keyword search and presenting lists of books to users is not always the best way to find what you want in a library, especially if you’re not sure what you’re looking for. I had an idea that if you linked similar books together in a ‘web’ and did that for every book in the library, interesting patterns would emerge.”
The space-age entry presents library data in three different views where library books are represented as moving stars that change speed and location according to how popular they are within a given course. They also join together in constellations to show books on connected topics, and are orbited by meteors representing the courses of students who have used those books.
The Galaxy view is the start screen. The location and speed of the dots are random, as this view is designed for users to randomly browse and search for books in the library.
Next is the Book view. It comes up when a user clicks on a book node, and shows the links between books as lines. Books closer to the centre are more closely related than books further away. This view uses the book suggestion data to make the links. The size of the course nodes shows how popular the current book is with that course’s students – bigger nodes are more popular.
And finally there is Subject view, which appears when users click on a course node. It displays all the books used by students on that course. This view is very similar to Galaxy view except that more popular books have larger nodes, and speed and position have no relation to the results.
Parker expects the application to be run on dedicated search machines inside a library, enabling users to search beyond keywords. The interface could also be based on a “surface” computer that would let multiple users search the library and look at library books.
The widget is freely available to download and re-use under a Creative Commons licence, which is standard for the outputs of all JISC projects. The code will also be made available for people to create their own book galaxy for using their own data.
The judges were looking for applications that demonstrated ease of use, usefulness and potential. The JISC MOSAIC (Making Our Shared Activity Information Count) project is now investigating the possibilities for incorporating data showing user activity, such as book circulation, in UK university libraries.
JISC programme manager Balviar Notay says “JISC has funded this innovative research to probe how we analyse and exploit library activity data. It is exciting to see the potential of this data and how it could provide library users with a new, personalised way of browsing the shelves.”
Parker’s Book Galaxy Applet was chosen for its innovative visualisation of data in an appealing format as well as the simplicity of its interface. By moving the mouse around the galaxy over the different books and subjects, users can see their titles. Blue dots represent books and yellow dots courses. By clicking on a book, users can view a web of related books for the selected book at the centre, with courses that use the book listed around the outside.
Users can also search for book titles by typing keywords into the search box. If a search returns few results, all the book titles are displayed as a list. Clicking on a course will show all the books that are used by that course. Users can also return to the previous view and run broader searches.
The judging panel also thought that the tool was very true to the data it so graphically displays. It has integrity both in terms of scale and the links that Parker made. Users will find it extremely intuitive while testing it. “If you put your trust in the data and start to browse, it has integrity in terms of the data provided,” says David Kay, JISC MOSAIC project manager.
At a time when publishers, libraries and content providers are thinking of providing content to users in attractive platforms, the judges also emphasised the criterion of “coolness” of the application. “Parker’s application was marked 5/5 for coolness,” says Kay.
He adds that the widget is the first of its kind. “The data isn’t unique – it came from the University of Huddersfield library – but there is not a lot of user data out there. The unique thing is this way of modelling the world of books relative to user popularity and interest, and to courses.”
Parker’s widget draws its inspiration in the stars, but it is clear that its inventor’s feet remain firmly planted on the ground: “I hope to see the ideas presented in my application applied to library search systems as an alternative to keyword searches, but not as a replacement.”
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