ANLY482 AY2017-18 T2 Group 17 Project Overview
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Project Overview
With over 250 000 e-books provided by both Lee Ka Shing (LKS) library and Kwa Geok Choo (KGC) law library through the web service at library.smu.edu.sg, SMU library provide an array of collections to cater to support teaching and research across the multiple schools and faculties. Currently, SMU library purchases e-books on certain databases through the Patron Driven Acquisition (PDA) scheme.
The PDA scheme allows SMU library to list e-books that are not yet purchased as “available” to SMU community. These e-books are subsequently automatically purchase upon meeting some trigger points when access by the SMU community. The trigger points are defined by a set of business rules to determine if an e-book should be purchased.
Resources will be deducted from SMU library’s PDA fund when a book is purchased. At the moment, it has been highlighted that some e-book purchases are triggered by a single unique user due to repeated access. As a result, it diminishes the effective use of PDA funds as the e-books are not widely used across SMU community.
Project Objectives
The high-level objectives of the project are to help SMU libraries enhance their policy on e-book purchases in their database. This will be achieved through the following steps:
1) Analyze user behavior when browsing the database
2) Identify how effective the current trigger points are to purchase an e-book
3) To propose an optimal trigger point for efficient resource allocation for the Patron Driven Acquisition (PDA) scheme
Sponsor Background
SMU Library
SMU Library is one of the key facilities that supports research and learning capabilities of SMU community through its extensive collection of printed and electronic books (e-books), academic journals, research publications and databases. Access to the information can be easily obtained via the search platform provided in the web based services on SMU library website. SMU library’s goal is to allow SMU community to have a seamless access to information that empower their journey towards life-long learning. To enable this, SMU library has placed emphasis on developing a working relationship with SMU community and other stakeholders and the delivery of value-added services.
Motivation
Team Motivation
Our team consists of 2 information systems students and 1 accountancy student who will be venturing into the analytics area for our career. Although analytics practicum maybe a compulsory module for us, we wanted to use it as an avenue to give back to the school. By working with SMU library, we hope to that our work can impact SMU library’s operations positively. Through this project, we also aim put our skills learned in a classroom environment to practical use. This hands-on experience will serve as a stepping stone for in our analytics journey and to empower us for our careers.
