how do the "similar" items features work?

[gibsonjc]

MIL - [I] like the similar items feature, but I’m curious how it’s drawing information. Is it solely call number based? Is it looking for keywords? Subject headings?

[gibsonjc]

From searches.ini:

; This section defines settings used to fetch similar records. [MoreLikeThis] ; Boolean value indicating whether the newer MoreLikeThis query handler should be ; used instead of the traditional MoreLikeThis component (default). Only the ; MoreLikeThis query handler supports sharded indexes, but as of this writing, the ; traditional component offers more nuanced relevance ranking. Results from these ; methods may differ. ;useMoreLikeThisHandler = true ; If the MoreLikeThis handler is used, this setting can be used to adjust its ; behavior. See https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/solr/Other+Parsers#OtherParsers-MoreLikeThisQueryParser ; for more information regarding the possible parameters. ;params = "qf=title,title_short,callnumber-label,topic,language,author,publishDate mintf=1 mindf=1"; ; This setting can be used to limit the maximum number of suggestions. Default is 5. ;count = 5

[gibsonjc]

KNX - The "similar items" listing--I'm not sure how to teach students what this is or why things show up in this list? What is it? This seems to be an effort to be more like Amazon, but is this really what our users need from a library? I would much rather see a list of subject headings ("topics")pulled from the bib record that they can click on (because, even though they are clickable there in the bib, students don't click on them because they don't know what they are and don't even read the bib record anyway) and some related ones as well.

Also, it doesn't work...Maybe if there's no cover image you see this? If you hover over an image you get text but it's hard to read because it's on top of the "no image available".

[nmswanson]

ISU - Similar Items listing is not very helpful

Often times, Similar Items brings up items that aren't actually related to the current item or are not helpful. Examples = The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Shells (https://i-share.carli.illinois.edu/vf-isu/Record/ISUdb.21868; brings up other Audubon guides on unrelated topics, when it would make more sense to have more identification guides about shells), Screwtape Letters (https://i-share.carli.illinois.edu/vf-isu/Record/ISUdb.1306015; For Young Women Only doesn't have anything to do with Screwtape letters). Also, separate records for the same book bring up totally different Similar Items (ex. compare the above Screwtape Letters to https://i-share.carli.illinois.edu/vf-isu/Record/ISUdb.252172 - also not a helpful listing because most of the items have no similarity to Screwtape Letters). It might be better to remove this, or try to adjust the algorithm to make the results more helpful and consistent.

Email 4/19/18