In order to get a better understanding of library user communities and to improve resource utilization, the author proposes an integrated operational application of data warehousing and datamining, combining statistical and pattern recognition tools, both integrated under a new concept named bibliomining. With the application of this model to transactional records of the library, patron privacy is fully respected through the creation of an anonymized version of the operational data, before reformatting them for bibliomining analysis. The bibliomining process itself consists mainly of collecting, cleaning and anonymizing the data, in order to discover underlying behavior patterns. The results can be combined with several variables, before being used to improve decision-making by the library administration.
bibliomining; data warehousing; datamining; decision-making; library administration