Resolvability of references in users' personal collections

Introduction. Digital library users collect, enhance and manage their online reference collections to facilitate their research tasks. These personal collections, therefore, are likely to reflect users' interests, and are representative of their profile. Understanding these collections offers great opportunities for developing personalized digital library services, such as reference recommender systems. Method. We recruited subjects by individual e-mails to the users of RefWorks a web-based personal reference management tool installed for use at the University of Minnesota. To participate, subjects needed to give their consent and share their references with us. 96 subjects participated, majority (65) of who were graduate students, resulting into 30,336 references. Based on the type of the reference, these were stratified into one of the three valid identifying IDs DOI, ISBN, or URL. Multiple reference resolvers (CrossRef, WorldCat) were used to enhance the overall resolvability of these collections. Analysis. Descriptive statistics and simple graphics analysis were used to describe the dataset. Results. Over 90% of the total references in users' personal collections could possibly have a valid ID (DOI, ISBN, URL), and therefore, are potentially resolvable. However, only about 17% of the references in these collections had a valid ID, and fewer than 11% actually resolved successfully. Using a combination of reference resolvers, the total resolvability of the references in these collections was enhanced from under 11% to over 41%. Conclusions. Users' personal reference collections have a tremendous potential of building, supporting, and enhancing personalized digital library services, such as reference recommender systems. Abstract