Author:
M. Elena Renda
Affiliation:
Istituto di Informatica e Telematica del CNR, Italy
Keyword(s):
Personalized systems, Automatic source selection, Information Filtering, Metasearch, Rank fusion.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Multimedia and User Interfaces
;
Personalized Web Sites and Services
;
Searching and Browsing
;
User Modeling
;
Web Information Systems and Technologies
;
Web Interfaces and Applications
Abstract:
A common characteristic of most of the traditional search and retrieval systems is that they are oriented towards a generic user, often failing to connect people with what they are really looking for. In this paper we present PI SA, a Personalized Information Search Assistant, which, rather than relying on the unrealistic assumption that the user will precisely specify what she is really looking for when searching, leverages implicit information about the user’s interests. PI SA is a desktop application which provides the user with a highly personalized information space where she can create, manage and organize folders (similarly to email programs), and manage documents retrieved by the system into her folders to best fit her needs. Furthermore, PI SA offers different mechanisms to search the Web, and the possibility of personalizing result delivery and visualization. PI SA learns user and folder profiles from user’s choices, and uses these profiles to improve retrieval effectivenes
s in searching by selecting the relevant resources to query and filtering the results accordingly. A working prototype has been developed, tested and evaluated. Preliminary user evaluation and experimental results are very promising, showing that the personalized search environment PI SA provides considerably increases effectiveness and user satisfaction in the searching process.
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