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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
by gajomi 11y 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).
- claytonjy 11y agoI 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 11y agoActually , 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 11y agoGet your hand on the library data and make the next tinder killer!
- novalis78 11y agoBooktinder.com
- RBerenguel 11y agoAt 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 11y agoI 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-records-purged-data-privacy http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/13/us-library-re...