Bookdata-tools/docs/data/bx.md

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BookCrossing	Data Model	5

BookCrossing

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The BookCrossing data set consists of user-provided ratings — both implicit and explicit — of books.

If you use this data, cite:

Cai-Nicolas Ziegler, Sean M. McNee, Joseph A. Konstan, and Georg Lausen. 2005. Improving Recommendation Lists Through Topic Diversification. Proceedings of the 14th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW '05), May 10-14, 2005, Chiba, Japan.

Imported data lives in the bx schema. The source data files are automatically downloaded and unpacked by the provided scripts and DVC stages.

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Data Model Diagram

• SVG file
• PlantUML source

Import Steps

The import is controlled by the following DVC steps:

data/BX.dvc

Unpack the BookCrossing zip file.

data/BX-CSV-Dump.zip.dvc

Download the BookCrossing zip file.s

schemas/bx-schema.dvc

Run bx-schema.sql to set up the base schema.

import/bx-ratings.dvc

Import raw BookCrossing ratings from data/BX-Book-Ratings.csv.

index/bx-index.dvc

Run bx-index.sql to index the rating data and integrate with book data.

Raw Data

The raw rating data, with invalid characters cleaned up, is in the bx.raw_ratings table, with the following columns:

user_id

The user identifier (numeric).

isbn

The book ISBN (text).

rating

The book rating. The ratings are on a 1-10 scale, with 0 indicating an implicit-feedback record.

Extracted Rating Tables

We extract the following tables for BookCrossing ratings:

rating

The explicit ratings (rating > 0) from the raw ratings table.

add_action

Records of users adding books, either by rating or through an implicit feedback action, without rating values.

Both of these tables are pre-clustered, so the book IDs refer to book clusters and not individual ISBNs or editions. They have the following columns:

user_id

The user ID.

book_id

The book code for this book; the cluster identifier if available, or the ISBN-based book code if this book is not in a cluster.

rating

The rating value; if the user has rated multiple books in a cluster, the median value is reported. This field is only on the rating table.

nactions

The number of book actions this user performed on this book. Equivalent to the number of books in the cluster that the user has added or rated.