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Reviewer: Annika M. Hinze

This is a compilation of 18 papers that were initially presented at a workshop at the ACM Computer-Human Interface (CHI) Conference in 2003. The 35 contributing authors are drawn from a variety of backgrounds: academia, industry, and government. The papers are presented as a portfolio of current research across the field of personalization in e-commerce, a goal that the content of the book easily achieves, though it suffers a few shortcomings with regard to overall structure and context. There are five parts to the book: "Introduction and Overview," "Theoretical, Conceptual and Architectural Frameworks of Personalization," "Research on the Design and Evaluation of Personalized User Experiences in Different Domains," "Approaches to Personalization through Recommender Systems," and "Lessons Learned and Future Research Questions." The structure of the book as a whole is excellent; the grouping of chapters into themes is done notably well, though, sadly, the editors fail to explain their motivation for their chosen partition of the book. A clear explanation of the structure of the book would really help inexperienced readers, and those entirely new to this area of research. A related structural problem is that the table of contents is confusing: its visual layout leads to the reader easily misinterpreting the structure of the entire book. Only after some effort is the reader able to use the table of contents effectively. In addition, the use of the term "section" to describe a collection of chapters is rather confusing, given the normal use of "section" to identify a part of a chapter or paper. These "sections" are not mentioned after the introduction; there are no heading pages or other indicators for each section as it begins or ends. Thus, the 18 chapters continue, one after the other, without reference to the overall structure. The introductory section explains the chapters contained in each part. This provides a very good summary of each paper, and is very accessible and approachable. Here, the style is more of a reflection on each paper than a championing of the contribution of each paper. The second section, on the theme of frameworks, contains six papers introducing different overall frameworks of personalization. The section presents a nice selection of different, contrasting, and complementary approaches: theoretical, conceptual, and architectural. This highlights the notion that a variety of structural approaches are equally valid, and researchers from different backgrounds can make a tangible contribution. The book continues with a section on design and evaluation. The section comprises five chapters, referring to different types of applications, including ubiquitous commerce, e-government, and personalized shopping. Significantly, the chapters cover different user sensitivities concerning privacy and information sharing. The fourth section focuses on particular approaches to personalization using recommender systems, and consists of four chapters. The chapters address a combination of technical issues and application considerations. The concluding section contains two chapters. The first chapter focuses on lessons learned, regarding privacy in particular. The final chapter acts as a review of the field, based on the Ph.D. thesis of the author. The book ends here, without an overall summary and conclusion. This comes as somewhat of a surprise to the reader. This omission loses an opportunity to realize the full potential of the book as a whole. If the editors intended the last chapter to serve as an overall conclusion, it serves both the reader and the chapter's author poorly. The omission of a conclusion has a number of consequences: points that have not been looked at in the course of the book are never covered; consistent themes are not drawn out; and the lack of proper summary, and review of the book as a whole in retrospect, sells short the full potential of the book. Other shortcomings compound this problem. There is no overall bibliography, even a selective one, and there is no index. Furthermore, there are no abstracts of chapters, even at the beginning of each chapter. The "About the Authors" formatting and layout is inconsistent (namely, with regard to the title of the author), and is merely a list of contact details. Additionally, there are several formatting flaws. Graphics often cause erratic page breaks, and some pages are almost empty, even where the chapter continues on to additional pages. References are not consistently formatted between chapters. On the other hand, screen shots are consistently clear and readable. The book feels more like a proceedings than a book: this is a missed opportunity. Given the prestige and experience of the editing team, such shortcomings are deeply disappointing. Given that the book is one of a series on human-computer interaction, one might have expected a greater consideration for the needs of the reader. What is still a good book could readily have been an outstanding one. This volume is a thoughtfully and carefully compiled collection of pertinent papers, rather than a traditionally argued and structured book. The quality of the papers is high. If there is a disappointment, it is that the full measure of the possibilities of the content is not quite achieved. I would strongly recommend this book to any researcher from a related area approaching this field of study for the first time. Less experienced or less confident readers will, unfortunately, fail to get the most out of the book, due to the lack of clarity in the structuring, and the absence of a summary. Online Computing Reviews Service