Creating Popularity Badges

There are two main types of popularity badges: point-in-time popularity (PIT), which looks at the popularity of a record at a specific point in time—such as the number of current circulations or the number of open hold requests; and temporal popularity (TP), which looks at the popularity of a record over a period of time—such as the number of circulations in the past year or the number of hold requests placed in the last six months.

The following popularity badge parameters are available for configuration:

To create a new Statistical Popularity Badge:

  1. Go to Administration→Local Administration→Statistical Popularity Badges.
  2. Click on Actions→Add badge.
  3. Fill out the following fields as needed to create the badge:

    Note

    only Name, Scope, Weight, Recalculation Interval, Importance Interval, and Discard Value Count are required

    • Name: Library assigned name for badge. Each name must be unique. The name will show up in the OPAC record display. For example: Most Requested Holds for Books-Last 6 Months. Required field.
    • Description: Further information to provide context to staff about the badge.
    • Scope: Defines the owning organization unit of the badge. Badges will be applied to search result sorting when the Scope is equal to, or an ancestor, of the search location. For example, a branch specific search will include badges where the Scope is the branch, the system, and the consortium. A consortium level search, will include only badges where the Scope is set to the consortium. Item specific badges will apply only to records that have items owned at or below the Scope. Required field.
    • Weight: Can be used to indicate that a particular badge is more important than the other badges that the record might earn. The weight value serves as a multiplier of the badge rating. Required field with a default value of 1.
    • Age Horizon: Indicates the time frame during which events should be included for calculating the badge. For example, a popularity badge for Most Circulated Items in the Past Two Years would have an Age Horizon of 2 years. The Age Horizon should be entered as a number followed by day(s), month(s), year(s), such as 6 months or 2 years. Use with temporal popularity (TP) badges only.
    • Importance Horizon: Used in conjunction with Age Horizon, this allows more recent events to be considered more important than older events. A value of zero means that all events included by the Age Horizon will be considered of equal importance. With an Age Horizon of 2 years, an Importance Horizon of 6 months means that events, such as checkouts, that occurred within the past 6 months will be considered more important than the circulations that occurred earlier within the Age Horizon.
    • Importance Interval: Can be used to further divide up the timeframe defined by the Importance Horizon. For example, if the Importance Interval is 1 month, Evergreen will combine all of the events within that month for adjustment by the Importance Scale (see below). The Importance Interval should be entered as a number followed by 'day(s), week(s), month(s), year(s), such as 6 months or 2 years. Required field.
    • Importance Scale: The Importance Scale can be used to assign additional importance to events that occurred within the most recent Importance Interval. For example, if the Importance Horizon is 6 months and the Importance Interval is 1 month, the Importance Scale can be set to 6 to indicate that events that happened within the last month will count 6 times, events that happened 2 months ago will count 5 times, etc. The Importance Scale should be entered as a number followed by day(s), week(s), month(s), year(s), such as 6 months or 2 years.
    • Percentile: Can be used to assign a badge to only the records that score above a certain percentile. For example, it can be used indicate that you only want to assign the badge to records in the top 5% of results by setting the field to 95. To optimize the popularity badges, percentile should be set between 95-99 to assign a badge to the top 5%-1% of records.
    • Attribute Filter: Can be used to assign a badge to records that contain a specific Record Attribute. Currently this field can be configured by running a report (see note below) to obtain the JSON data that identifies the Record Attribute. The JSON data from the report output can be copied and pasted into this field. A new interface for creating Composite Record Attributes will be implemented with future development of the web client.

      • To run a report to obtain JSON data for the Attribute Filter, use SVF Record Attribute Coded Value Map as the template Source. For Displayed Fields, add Code, ID, and/or Description from the Source; also display the Definition field from the Composite Definition linked table. This field will display the JSON data in the report output. Filter on the Definition from the Composite Definition liked table and set the Operator to Is not NULL.
    • Circ Mod Filter: Apply the badge only to items with a specific circulation modifier. Applies only to item related badges as opposed to "bib record age" badges, for example.
    • Bib Source Filter: Apply the badge only to bibliographic records with a specific source.
    • Location Group Filter: Apply the badge only to items that are part of the specified Shelving Location Group. Applies only to item related badges.
    • Recalculation Interval: Indicates how often the popularity value of the badge should be recalculated for bibliographic records that have earned the badge. Recalculation is controlled by the cron job badge_score_generator.pl. Required field with a default value of 1 month.
    • Fixed Rating: Can be used to set a fixed popularity value for all records that earn the badge. For example, the Fixed Rating can be set to 5 to indicate that records earning the badge should always be considered extremely popular.
    • Discard Value Count: Can be used to prevent certain records from earning the badge to make Percentile more accurate by discarding titles that are below the value indicated. For example, if the badge looks at the circulation count over the past 6 months, Discard Value Count can be used to eliminate records that had too few circulations to be considered "popular". If you want to discard records that only had 1-3 circulations over the past 6 months, the Discard Value Count can be set to 3. Required field with a default value of 0.
    • Last Refresh Time: Displays the last time the badge was recalculated based on the Recalculation Interval.
    • Popularity Parameter: Types of TP and PIT factors described above that can be used to create badges to assign popularity to bibliographic records.
  4. Click OK to save the badge.