personalization
It’s everywhere
(well, almost…)
idea

Leveraging Student Data To
Personalize Your Library Web Site
2011 LITA National Forum
Ian Chan
Web Development Librarian
California State University San Marcos
Pearl Ly
Access Services & Emerging Technologies Librarian
Pasadena 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
Customization is
user-tailored
Focus is on user selecting and
maintaining layout and
relevant content
Personalization is
system-tailored
System reacts & interacts with
user choices & data to suggest
layout & relevant content
(Sundar and Marathe, 2010)
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]
Database
Taxonomy
Guide
User Profile
Content
Profile
Similar by
Terms
Views
[queries]
Panels
[layout]
Blue = Drupal modules
Green = content types
Personalized Pages
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
How do we load the user data & manage user
profiles?
User Data
Authentication
Campus
LDAP
Blue = Drupal modules
Green = user info objects
Accounts
Interests
LDAP
Integration
User
Import
Node
Import
Ezproxy
Integration
User
Account
User
Profile
Recommendations
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): 298322.
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.