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The virtual library secretary: A user model-based software agent

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Abstract

A user model comprises knowledge of the user's past and present tasks, and is the essential element in adaptive user interfaces. Through the propagation of user models, we can take the user models into the world of software agents, and thus construct user model-based software agents. The user model approach reduces the threats of software agents penetrating a local host and the amount of data transferred. This paper presents the Virtual Library Secretary, which is a user model-based software agent system. The Virtual Library Secretary offers information retrieval and information filtering to the user. The system is part of the Virtual Secretary project. The user model is established by a simple neural network. In this way, the agent is able to learn and adapt to the user's behaviour. This paper discusses the user model concept, presents the Virtual Secretary system architecture and describes how this architecture works through the Virtual Library Secretary.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Tromsø, N-9037, Tromsø, Norway

    Johan Gustav Bellika, Gunnar Hartvigsen & Roy Arild Widding

Authors
  1. Johan Gustav Bellika
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  2. Gunnar Hartvigsen
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  3. Roy Arild Widding
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gunnar Hartvigsen.

Additional information

The Virtual Secretary project is an on-going project at the University of Tromsø. It includes two phases: the first phase (ViSe) focuses on user model-based software agents for information filtering and agent control propagation; the second phase (ViSe2) concentrates on information integration via cooperative agents in a distributed environment. The project is partly supported by the Research Council of Norway (Grant no. 112577/431).

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Bellika, J.G., Hartvigsen, G. & Widding, R.A. The virtual library secretary: A user model-based software agent. Personal Technologies 2, 162–187 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01321174

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