4 ms·

While I can certainly sympathies with the Librarian in this story and agree that human judgement should trump an algorithm in what books a library stocks the me

by neaden 10y ago

While I can certainly sympathies with the Librarian in this story and agree that human judgement should trump an algorithm in what books a library stocks the method used here seems inappropriate and counterproductive in the long term.

dekhn 10y ago
I agree. Library stocks really do need to be managed (nobody claimed any one library has to be "complete"), and circulation numbers are the strongest signal that a book is valuable. Working around that to "save" books when budgets are limited is actually zero-sum and will have consequences elsewhere in the system.
- sfrailsdev 10y ago
  circulation numbers look at recent circulation, with no consideration of the way certain books may change in popularity. Here we have a Domain expert without financial motive who is saying that the algorithm is inefficient. Algorithms should inform book culling decisions made by the Librarian, but they shouldn't replace the Librarian's knowledge and expertise.
  - ashark 10y ago
    I don't use our local library system much because they stock few or no copies of the things I'm interested in getting from them, like non-fic outside the poppiest of pop-non-fic—not even hardcore academic stuff necessarily, just not-garbage non-fic—math/computing books, and semi-obscure classics or translations. It's usually a waste of time to even check for those sorts of things there, and they don't even seem to be part of an inter-library loan program that can provide them. How can circulation numbers take into account people who aren't using the library because it already doesn't have anything they want? I can't be alone in this, but simply looking at circulation numbers won't capture that, and piloting with a book or two from those categories won't get me back in (I probably won't notice because, after many disappointments, I've mostly stopped looking). Let an algorithm go nuts on that data without human judgement and I suspect you'll gradually put more and more people in my position, unless it's a damned smart one.
    - cfmcdonald 10y ago
      Any chance they have an interlibrary loan system? I can get all sorts of books from a variety of library systems (including the main state university libraries) delivered to my local town branch.
      - anigbrowl 10y ago
        Interlibrary loan is great, not least because it's given us WorldCat, but it's no excuse for having a crappy collection. Libraries should of course add new things constantly, but the library is not just a lending club for poor people; it's meant to function as a repository of renewable intellectual content, and provide people with the opportunity to encounter ideas they might not otherwise.
    - stinkytaco 10y ago
      We do a few things: 1. Regular strategic planning which includes a community survey. This is conducted by an outside firm and non-users are targeted as part of the survey. We also do focus groups. 2. Interlibrary loan. You local library can likely get titles from other libraries. This should inform the collection. 3. Patron driven acquisition. Some way of suggesting books should be available. We buy most suggestions and find that books that are suggested circ better than ones selected by staff (generally, anyway).
- canadian_voter 10y ago
  and circulation numbers are the strongest signal that a book is valuable I disagree. A book might go out once and chance someone's life. Another might go out a hundred times and sit unread, or have a negligible impact. An algorithm can't determine this. A good librarian can.
- anigbrowl 10y ago
  circulation numbers are the strongest signal that a book is valuable LOL no, by that logic The da Vinci Code or Harry Potter books would be literary landmarks. Now, I enjoy a good yarn as much as anyone (and Dan Brown and JK Rowling write great yarns) but it's not like books and the book selling industry are all a giant intellectual meritocracy, marketing and commercial leverage have a lot to do with it. Certainly popularity is a useful signal, but things can be popular because they appeal to a lowest common denominator rather than because they're of great quality. Let's take JK Rowling's Harry Potter works as an example. They're excellently crafted in terms of narrative pacing, clear characterization, and engaging storytelling. I enjoyed them hugely when I read them a few years ago, and happily spent a week or 10 days immersed in the wizarding world. Anyone who likes reading can enjoy them, and aspiring writers can learn plenty from studying them. At the same time, they're very formulaic and recycle lots of common fictional tropes --- indeed that's partly why they're worthy of study, - their very shallowness makes it easier to spot the structural features. But we would be making a mistake is took the excellent qualities as the standard of value, because the popularity of Harry Potter and its many imitators in the marketplace would have a tendency to crowd out books that excel in other areas where works of popular fiction are deficient. It's fine for publishers and bookstores to pursue the public taste wherever it leads, but the function of the library is provide more rounded and balanced offerings whose value will span generations rather than only focusing on what's most popular. There's a lovely little library a few blocks from me that I thought I would spend one day a week in when I first saw it, but I hardly ever go there because the selection is abysmal. It's full of multiple copies of things that used to be popular, and woefully lacking in good things that were never very popular. A library's primary purpose is to be full of good books so that even if you can't find a particular work you hoped to read today (perish the thought that one might have to wait for anything...), you will have many high quality alternatives. This is only possible of you allow librarians to do their job as curators. They should not be required to distil years of complex and highly individual literary and organizational knowledge into the sort of simplistic metrics that appeal to professional administrators. Of course, part of the problem is that some people see the intellectual and cultural diversity of libraries as a cultural threat that has the potential to undermine the status quo, and thus attack the function and independence of publicly-funded libraries in an effort to curtail rather than curate the spread of knowledge.
drzaiusapelord 10y ago
> and agree that human judgement should trump an algorithm in what books a library stocks Why? People are much more biased than machines. If this algorithm is well written and unbiased then we may have a case of someone saving books that speak to their biases. What if it was revealed it was books about young earth, anti-vaccination, promotion of Islamic extremism, and white supremacy? Would you be so welcoming of these rebel librarians? The nice part of the algorithm is that, in theory, it should just be looking at circulation numbers and culling appropriately. Regardless, this is all a stop-gap measure until we can get every library digital so we don't have to worry about shelf space.
- cestith 10y ago
  An algorithm that only takes into account popularity and not reviews nor importance of the work to literature or to its technical field contains its own biases.
  - drzaiusapelord 10y ago
    Says who? It could cross-reference a list of important cultural works and make them exempt, for example. That list can be compiled by a committee instead of a lone guy who may have an agenda.
    - anigbrowl 10y ago
      But the whole point of librarians is to allow that to happen, rather than thinking there's one perfect list of books that everyone should just copy from. For sure you would see lots of bias - which you could then measure and challenge, but which could also turn out to be valuable. It's odd to me that you can't see the inherent bias in saying that popularity is a proxy for literary value and designing your algorithm around that. Sure, it'll give you an unbiased insight into what's popular, but that assumes that libraries are in the business of catering to the popular taste, when we have a bustling private sector to do that for us already, which takes account of the fact that a great deal of the publishing industry's output is disposable and of only short-term interest. I mean, McDonalds is arguably the world's most popular restaurant chain, but that doesn't mean their food has significant gastronomic value, does it? What is in the public interest, and what the public is currently interested in, are two wholly different things.
anigbrowl 10y ago
Well if you take people's autonomy away they're going to find other routes to the same objective. Librarians aren't shelf-stocking robots, but the law as written devalues their professional contribution in favor of a foolish consistency.

by neaden 10y ago

dekhn 10y ago

I agree. Library stocks really do need to be managed (nobody claimed any one library has to be "complete"), and circulation numbers are the strongest signal that a book is valuable. Working around that to "save" books when budgets are limited is actually zero-sum and will have consequences elsewhere in the system.

sfrailsdev 10y ago
circulation numbers look at recent circulation, with no consideration of the way certain books may change in popularity. Here we have a Domain expert without financial motive who is saying that the algorithm is inefficient. Algorithms should inform book culling decisions made by the Librarian, but they shouldn't replace the Librarian's knowledge and expertise.
- ashark 10y ago
  I don't use our local library system much because they stock few or no copies of the things I'm interested in getting from them, like non-fic outside the poppiest of pop-non-fic—not even hardcore academic stuff necessarily, just not-garbage non-fic—math/computing books, and semi-obscure classics or translations. It's usually a waste of time to even check for those sorts of things there, and they don't even seem to be part of an inter-library loan program that can provide them. How can circulation numbers take into account people who aren't using the library because it already doesn't have anything they want? I can't be alone in this, but simply looking at circulation numbers won't capture that, and piloting with a book or two from those categories won't get me back in (I probably won't notice because, after many disappointments, I've mostly stopped looking). Let an algorithm go nuts on that data without human judgement and I suspect you'll gradually put more and more people in my position, unless it's a damned smart one.
  - cfmcdonald 10y ago
    Any chance they have an interlibrary loan system? I can get all sorts of books from a variety of library systems (including the main state university libraries) delivered to my local town branch.
    - anigbrowl 10y ago
      Interlibrary loan is great, not least because it's given us WorldCat, but it's no excuse for having a crappy collection. Libraries should of course add new things constantly, but the library is not just a lending club for poor people; it's meant to function as a repository of renewable intellectual content, and provide people with the opportunity to encounter ideas they might not otherwise.
  - stinkytaco 10y ago
    We do a few things: 1. Regular strategic planning which includes a community survey. This is conducted by an outside firm and non-users are targeted as part of the survey. We also do focus groups. 2. Interlibrary loan. You local library can likely get titles from other libraries. This should inform the collection. 3. Patron driven acquisition. Some way of suggesting books should be available. We buy most suggestions and find that books that are suggested circ better than ones selected by staff (generally, anyway).
canadian_voter 10y ago
and circulation numbers are the strongest signal that a book is valuable I disagree. A book might go out once and chance someone's life. Another might go out a hundred times and sit unread, or have a negligible impact. An algorithm can't determine this. A good librarian can.
anigbrowl 10y ago
circulation numbers are the strongest signal that a book is valuable LOL no, by that logic The da Vinci Code or Harry Potter books would be literary landmarks. Now, I enjoy a good yarn as much as anyone (and Dan Brown and JK Rowling write great yarns) but it's not like books and the book selling industry are all a giant intellectual meritocracy, marketing and commercial leverage have a lot to do with it. Certainly popularity is a useful signal, but things can be popular because they appeal to a lowest common denominator rather than because they're of great quality. Let's take JK Rowling's Harry Potter works as an example. They're excellently crafted in terms of narrative pacing, clear characterization, and engaging storytelling. I enjoyed them hugely when I read them a few years ago, and happily spent a week or 10 days immersed in the wizarding world. Anyone who likes reading can enjoy them, and aspiring writers can learn plenty from studying them. At the same time, they're very formulaic and recycle lots of common fictional tropes --- indeed that's partly why they're worthy of study, - their very shallowness makes it easier to spot the structural features. But we would be making a mistake is took the excellent qualities as the standard of value, because the popularity of Harry Potter and its many imitators in the marketplace would have a tendency to crowd out books that excel in other areas where works of popular fiction are deficient. It's fine for publishers and bookstores to pursue the public taste wherever it leads, but the function of the library is provide more rounded and balanced offerings whose value will span generations rather than only focusing on what's most popular. There's a lovely little library a few blocks from me that I thought I would spend one day a week in when I first saw it, but I hardly ever go there because the selection is abysmal. It's full of multiple copies of things that used to be popular, and woefully lacking in good things that were never very popular. A library's primary purpose is to be full of good books so that even if you can't find a particular work you hoped to read today (perish the thought that one might have to wait for anything...), you will have many high quality alternatives. This is only possible of you allow librarians to do their job as curators. They should not be required to distil years of complex and highly individual literary and organizational knowledge into the sort of simplistic metrics that appeal to professional administrators. Of course, part of the problem is that some people see the intellectual and cultural diversity of libraries as a cultural threat that has the potential to undermine the status quo, and thus attack the function and independence of publicly-funded libraries in an effort to curtail rather than curate the spread of knowledge.

drzaiusapelord 10y ago

> and agree that human judgement should trump an algorithm in what books a library stocks Why? People are much more biased than machines. If this algorithm is well written and unbiased then we may have a case of someone saving books that speak to their biases. What if it was revealed it was books about young earth, anti-vaccination, promotion of Islamic extremism, and white supremacy? Would you be so welcoming of these rebel librarians? The nice part of the algorithm is that, in theory, it should just be looking at circulation numbers and culling appropriately. Regardless, this is all a stop-gap measure until we can get every library digital so we don't have to worry about shelf space.

cestith 10y ago
An algorithm that only takes into account popularity and not reviews nor importance of the work to literature or to its technical field contains its own biases.
- drzaiusapelord 10y ago
  Says who? It could cross-reference a list of important cultural works and make them exempt, for example. That list can be compiled by a committee instead of a lone guy who may have an agenda.
  - anigbrowl 10y ago
    But the whole point of librarians is to allow that to happen, rather than thinking there's one perfect list of books that everyone should just copy from. For sure you would see lots of bias - which you could then measure and challenge, but which could also turn out to be valuable. It's odd to me that you can't see the inherent bias in saying that popularity is a proxy for literary value and designing your algorithm around that. Sure, it'll give you an unbiased insight into what's popular, but that assumes that libraries are in the business of catering to the popular taste, when we have a bustling private sector to do that for us already, which takes account of the fact that a great deal of the publishing industry's output is disposable and of only short-term interest. I mean, McDonalds is arguably the world's most popular restaurant chain, but that doesn't mean their food has significant gastronomic value, does it? What is in the public interest, and what the public is currently interested in, are two wholly different things.

anigbrowl 10y ago

Well if you take people's autonomy away they're going to find other routes to the same objective. Librarians aren't shelf-stocking robots, but the law as written devalues their professional contribution in favor of a foolish consistency.