Home | Personalisation (Summary)
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SCOPE

Issues dealt with in this guideline include:
Personalisation
Smartcards and swipecards
Portals
User authentication
Payment systems
Privacy
Interactive fora
The virtual reference library
Agent technology
Implications for staff roles and training

POLICY ISSUES

• Sophisticated forms of personalised services will soon be available in public libraries. These are likely to be accessed by means of swipe cards which can give people access to their own personalised files on computers in libraries.
• Libraries will need to decide whether to purchase a personalisation package or build their own, and whether to undertake their own authentication procedures or rely on those of third parties.
• Libraries will have to address the issue of the integration of user databases with content databases.
• Libraries must also be aware of the coming changes to systems of authentication and the possibility of this process either becoming more complex and expensive or being taken out of their control. They must also address the ethical issues in terms of protection of privacy, perhaps through a code of conduct.

• The eEurope Action Plan makes the broad case for personalisation particularly in relation to privacy and combatting crime: ‘secure networks and secure access using smart cards are vital elements in building trust and confidence amongst users in electronic commerce’.

• Personalisation also takes place at the level of the portal or the website, in addition to the level of the PC. The degree to which public libraries will provide personalised services depends upon their ability - and to some extent speed of adoption of the technologies, including smart cards.

• Personalisation could lead to changes in the way libraries operate. For example, there will be an impact on performance measurement, with opportunities to obtain more detailed management information on the use of resources leading to maximum use for each item or subscription purchased. Ranganathan's principles of "every book its reader" and "save the time of the reader" can be effectively translated into action. Also the change from "product push" to "user pull" will impact on the role of staff, and the implications for staff training will need to be addressed.
• Very few public libraries have services of this kind in place as yet, but they are becoming more common in academic and special libraries (see links). Public libraries need to consider which applications can be adapted for their use.

GOOD PRACTICE GUIDELINES
Personalisation
A personalised system is one which responds differently to two people who issue the same request because of their previous interaction with the system.

Personalisation functions, increasing by level of sophistication, could include:

• enabling users to manage their own library transactions;
• enabling libraries to treat their users as individuals - greet them by name, avoid asking them twice for the same information, send e-mails to them about material awaiting collection, overdue items, new acquisitions of interest to them, special events;
• enabling users to design their own web page - especially useful for those requiring special access facilities such as print impaired people or those using a different language - and select which services they want to receive;
• enabling libraries to provide users with information on new materials, web sites, etc. based on their stated areas of interest. They could have more than one identity for this purpose e.g. a work identity, a learning identity, a leisure identity;
• enabling users to build their own personal library by saving bibliographical details, URLs etc.;
• encouraging the building of community groups by enabling users with similar interests to interact with one another.

Personalisation can take place on 2 levels:

• aimed at groups e.g. children, business users;
• aimed at individuals.

Personalisation can be brought about in two ways:

• Implicit personalisation (computer driven) - the system tracks usage patterns and preferences and adapts systems and interfaces accordingly (e.g. Amazon.com)
• Explicit personalisation (under user control) - systems which can hold data about users with their full knowledge and which can enable users to identify themselves and so gain access to services which they have customised deliberately (e.g. most Internet portals such My Yahoo. These two approaches can be combined in a variety of ways.

Recommender systems.
These are systems which take input directly from the user, and based on user needs, preferences and known usage patterns, make recommendations of products and services e.g. books to buy/read, websites to visit. The idea is that the user can get what they want without having to ask. The technologies involved in recommender systems are information filtering, collaborated filtering, user profiling, machine learning, case based retrieval, data mining, and similarity-based retrieval (see Amazon books). An example of a library application is whichbook.net.

Swipe cards and smart cards.
These are not technical terms and are sometimes not used with precision, but the following distinction is usually observed:
Swipe cards: plastic cards with a magnetic strip on them which, on being swiped through a groove or slot, identify a user and permit them to access certain facilities. They may, for example, open a door or let them use a computer terminal. They do not contain any more information than is necessary to identify the individual, the real information about them being held on a database.
Smartcards may be physically identical to swipe cards and work in the same way but unlike swipe cards they contain a microchip which can contain information about a particular individual and can carry out calculations. This information will not be stored on any other database.

Swipe cards are cheap but smart cards are fairly expensive to issue and uneconomic for libraries as a stand-alone application, though perhaps not if issued by a local authority to provide access to a range of local authority services e.g. car parks, swimming baths etc. For example Cornwall local authorities (SW England) are this year 2002 looking for 50,000 local residents to opt to use a smartcard which will enable them to use public libraries, buses and school meals.

There are a large number of standards relevant to smartcards - also called identification cards and financial transaction cards (see http://www.iso.ch/ (search for ICS field 35.240.15).

See also legal issues.

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