Data Mining (Bibliomining) for Management Decisions in Libraries

Library and information services in corporations, schools, universities and communities capture information about their users, circulation history, resources in the collection and search patterns. Unfortunately, few libraries have taken advantage of these data as a way to improve customer service, manage acquisition budgets or influence strategic decision making about uses of information in their organizations. In this paper, a global view of the data generated in libraries, and the variety of decisions that those data can inform is presented. The paper describes ways in which library and information managers can use data mining in their libraries, i.e., bibliomining to understand patterns of behaviour among library users and staff members and patterns of information resource use throughout the institution.