[Koha] schema question

[Rosalie Blake]

Hello Stuart,
On 13 May 2002, at 18:31, s.yeates at cs.waikato.ac.nz wrote:
 
> I'm interested in implementing a collaborative recommendation feature
> which allowed users to see which books other people who borrowed the
> current book had also borrowed. Both Amazon and Barnes and Noble use a
> similar feature.
Great idea. I think borrowers would love it.
> 
> In English the query I want is "Which books have been lent to the most
> people who have also borrowed the current book?" 


> I may also need to factor in a component of "how much has book A been
> borrowed by borrowers of book B compared to all other borrowers" to
> prevent very popular items (think Harry Potter) being recommended for
> every possible book. 
Good thinking

> My questions are:
> (1) How do I tell whether a book is 'available'? I think I need to
> check the items table and make sure that stack, notforloan, itemlost
> and wthdrawn are all zero does this sounds right?.
Stack is available in my libraries, but you are right about the other 
variables. Also Cancelled

 (2) I don't
> understand the distinction between items and biblioitems 
Items are all individual copies. Biblioitems is a way of grouping 
variant forms of the same biblio - eg large print copies of a title 
would be in a different biblioitem group from the ordinary size print, 
even though both sets contain exactly the same text.

(3) How to I
> differentiate between children's and adult's books, 
HLT puts a J at the front of each children's item type, and in front of 
the Dewey number for children's NF. So JPB, JPC, JF are all 
children's item types. 
between fiction
> and non-fiction? 
Fiction has no Dewey number
(4) Would collaborative recommendation be useful in a
> small library catalog? 
I think so
(5) Would the small incursion of user privacy
> be acceptable in a small public library? 
I'm confident it wouldn't be an issue here.
All power to your elbow.

Rosalie Blake
Horowhenua Library Trust