Bibliographic information provider Bowker and LibraryThing have launched BookPsychic, a new concept in readers advisory - a personal recommender system for libraries. BookPsychic is a service within LibraryThing for Libraries, distributed by Bowker, an affiliate of ProQuest. It went live at its first site earlier this month at Maine's Portland Public Library.
BookPsychic works by inviting library patrons to rate books using an interface that early users felt was familiar and intuitive. Books to rate and recommendations are split into simple genres. As patrons rate more books, the system learns more and more about their likes and dislikes, enabling the creation of "Just for You" recommendations.
BookPsychic's recommendation system runs off more than 200 million data points from members of LibraryThing.com, a social network for book lovers. It also analyses book and DVD popularity in the library, and across the more than 300 libraries that use LibraryThing for Libraries. BookPsychic integrates with the social networks Facebook and Twitter for signup, and users can import ratings from LibraryThing.com and Goodreads.
Initial reactions from the library and technology worlds have been positive.
