United We Find
March 27th, 2005If you are at all into collaborative work, take a look at an article in The Economist on collaborative filtering. It discusses the high points and downsides of using such systems and what the future holds for them:
“A search-engine user hunts alone; the user of a collaborative-filtering system is part of a crowd.”
Collaborative filtering is also somewhat present in the social bookmarking services (Furl, etc). Whenever I talk about these services to colleagues, I try not to refer to them as classification or cataloguing systems. I don’t think that’s where their potential lies (although that could be a small part of it). It’s the collective knowledge of the bookmarks (via the tags) that allows me to read about resources that I probably wouldn’t have found using a search engine. Heck, I probably wouldn’t have looked for it anyway! But that’s the point: The fact that I’m finding useful material (better yet, the material is coming to me!) without having to look for it. I love that.
The article also addresses spam and privacy issues, which are inherently imbedded in collaborative filters.
Do any library OPACs have recommendation systems in place? If not, should they? I think so. Just read this last sentence of the article:
“Search, and you search alone; ramble from one recommendation to another, and you may feel a curious kinship with the like-minded individuals whose opinions influence your own—and who are, in turn, influenced by your opinions.” (link via Smart Mobs)