Data Scientist Training for Librarians – re-skilling libraries for the future

http://christianlauersen.net/2015/09/21/data-scientist-training-for-librarians-re-skilling-libraries-for-the-future/

by tokai • 10 years ago

48 9 10 years ago

gajomi• 10 years ago

I didn't see anything along these lines in the article, but I remember thinking during my undergraduate studies that it would be cool to be able to opt-in to a program that gives a list of people who had checked out the same books (or perhaps the same `n' books) as you. I can't recall the exact title, but there was some relatively specialized book on dynamical systems I often checked out that kept getting recalled. I wondered: who is this person that wants this book and can we go get lunch together?

I guess that there are potential privacy issues here (although perhaps surmountable with an opt-in system) but it still strikes me as worth looking into (either for regular libraries or for sites like Amazon).

claytonjy2• 10 years ago

I agree that'd be cool, but _only_ in a hyper-local context like a physical library. I don't think I care about meeting the enormously distributed group of people buying similar books on Amazon.

petra• 10 years ago

Actually , if we're talking about a book you want to learn something from , online study groups could be pretty useful.

And the systems have decent idea how much each person is knowledgable in the material of a book, it could be a useful way to route questions about a variety of subjects .

tokai• 10 years ago

Get your hand on the library data and make the next tinder killer!

novalis78• 10 years ago

Booktinder.com

RBerenguel• 10 years ago

At my library Stoer & Bulirsch's Numerical Analysis was always going through the rounds. And now I'm curious about what the Dynamical Systems book you talk about :)

bigiain• 10 years ago

I think a way to overcome those privacy issues would be an interesting project. I'm not sure if that'd even be possible though - even if you set up a completely anonymous messaging system tied to lending records, Mallory could check out all the anarchist or communist or hacking or free-speech or number theory books (or whatever demographic she was targeting), then look like someone the _other_ borrowers of those books might want to meet...

Note that libraries have already started choosing the option to purge lending data to preserve privacy instead of sharing it to enable possible collaboration or meeting up:

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/13/us-library-re...

claytonjy2• 10 years ago

When I saw Day 1 was OpenRefine, I figured that was because they didn't want to teach this crowd programming, a perfectly fine decision.

But then they go and teach them Python anyways? If you're gonna do that, why not skip OpenRefine and teach them numpy/scipy/pandas/matplotlib for analysis and visualization?

phrogdriver• 10 years ago

why not skip OpenRefine and teach them numpy/scipy/pandas/matplotlib for analysis and visualization

OpenRefine is fantastic for cleaning and imputing missing data, especially for this audience. I don't think they are teaching users to do a lot of analysis and visualization in OpenRefine.

Data Scientist Training for Librarians – re-skilling libraries for the future

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