Connecting library content using data mining and text analytics on structured and unstructured data

With so much data available, how can busy users find the right bits of information? The venerable search does a great job but is it sufficient? A typical search at a popular Internet search engine returns thousands of results for a user to sieve through. This tedious process continues after finding a relevant article to find the next one and the next one until the user’s information needs are satisfied (or they give up). Instead of having users repeat the tedious search and sieve process, we should push relevant information packages to them. And to do this, we must connect our content. The advances in Big Data technologies present significant opportunities for us to connect the huge and growing amount of information resources in our repositories. By leveraging data mining and text analytics techniques, and Big Data technologies, the National Library Board (NLB) of Singapore has connected our structured and unstructured content. This has allowed us to provide comprehensive, relevant and trusted information to our users.