On May 5, Ex Libris rolled out the shiny new fabulousness that is bX. View the press release.
bX is, in the company's words, a scholarly recommender service. It can be embedded in the SFX Services Menu or, using the bX API, in the html of any Web page. Basically, bX looks at the article a user is requesting through the Services Menu and recommends other articles related to that citation. The idea is similar to Amazon's "Customers who bought this item also looked at...."
The data mining principles behind bX are based on research by Johan Bollen and Herbert Van de Sompel at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). Basically, bX looks at data mined from SFX user log files, either from one's own institution or aggregated across many institutions. Articles are related, as I understand it, by their proximity within user sessions. The relationships between and among articles grow stronger if many users view the same group of articles in proximity.
So... You are a food writer and you are conducting research on marshmallows. Within the same SFX session, you request three articles:
"It's a marshmallow world: International consumption patterns of marshmallows and marshmallow products," Foodie Journal
"Beyond white: Frequency of use of colored marshmallows in elementary school cafeterias," School Lunch Studies
"Does size matter? Comparing giant vs. regular marshmallows in hot cocoa drinks," Confectionary Review
Based only on your article use, the relationship between these three articles is pretty tenuous. Statistically speaking, it's not strong enough to base a recommendation on. But what if 10, or 100, or 1000 food writers from all over are requesting the same three articles? Suddenly, the relationship grows much stronger. And if these writers are also getting other articles about marshmallows, wouldn't you want to have an idea of what those articles are? They might have found something you missed, or they might be able to lead you in a completely new and fascinating direction. This is what bX does with aggregated data from SFX user logs, essentially bringing the wisdom of the marshmallow-researching crowd to the Services Menu, and in the process turning the Services Menu into a point-of-need discovery tool. I think this is awesome.
bX does cost something - it's not a free add-on to SFX. The price quotes that have been floated at ELUNA are, I think, quite reasonable, and when I get back to the building I'm going to push for us to get it. Keep an eye on the Get It menu.
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