IR

This paper is in two parts, following the suggestion that I first comment on my own past experience in information retrieval, and then present my views on the present and future.

Traditional information has relied on the extensive use of statistical parameters in the implementation of retrieval strategies. This paper sets out to investigate whether linguistic processes can be used as part of a document retrieval strategy. This ...

This study investigated two hypotheses concerning the use of anaphors in information retrieval. The first hypothesis, that anaphors tend to refer to integral concepts rather than to peripheral concepts, was well supported. Two samples of documents, one ...

Neither natural language processing nor information retrieval is any longer a young field, but the two areas have yet to achieve a graceful interaction. Mainly, the reason for this incompatibility is that information retrieval technology depends upon ...

In this paper, we point out that, in applications available to the general public, and/or natural language interfaces, the correction of phonographic errors (which are competence errors) is far more important than the correction of typographical errors (...

The concept of a “precedental data base” is introduced. It is a linguistic data base consisting of a dictionary of lexical patterns (clishes) and a dictionary of discourses. Some algorithms for textual information processing using precedental data bases ...

This paper explores an important problem in information retrieval: that of rapidly increasing amounts of full-text storage that is difficult to file and retrieve effectively. The author suggests that a possible avenue for improving full-text retrieval ...

We discuss the complexity of explanation activity in human-human goal-directed dialogue, and suggest that this complexity ought to be taken account of in the design of explanation in human-computer interaction. We propose a general model of clarity in ...

Spreading activation methods have been recommended in information retrieval to expand the search vocabulary and to complement the retrieved document sets. The spreading activation strategy is reminiscent of earlier associative indexing and retrieval ...

Knowledge Representation (KR) systems provide support for Artificial Intelligence systems that reason about relationships between objects in their domains of expertise. Because of their support for inference, KR systems appear to have potential to ...

This report discusses the implementation of a knowledge base for a library information system. It is done using a typed logic programming language—LOGIN—where type inheritance is built in. The knowledge base is structured in a hierarchical taxonomy of ...

In this paper we report progress on the development of ALLOY, a system that simplifies automatic document indexing and retrieval by combining techniques from several different approaches: expert, linguistic and statistical. The system is being designed ...

Two methods are given to improve weighting schemes by using relevance information of a set of queries. The first method is to estimate parameter values of two independence models in information retrieval — the binary independence model and the non-...

Based on the concept of user preference, we investigate the linear structure in information retrieval. We also discuss a practical procedure to determine the linear decision function and present an analysis of term weighting. Our experimental results ...

Proposed here is an internal representation and mapping method for multimedia information in which retrieval is based on the impression documents are desired to make. A user interface design for a system using this method is also proposed.

The proposed ...

In this paper the expected search length, which is a measure of retrieval system performance, is investigated from the viewpoint of axiomatic utility theory. Necessary and sufficient criteria for the expected search length to be an ordinal scale and ...

Probability estimation is important for the application of probabilistic models as well as for any evaluation in IR. We discuss the interdependencies between parameter estimation and other properties of probabilistic models. Then we define an optimum ...

This paper describes some aspects of a project with the aim of developing a user-friendly interface to a classical Information Retrieval (IR) System in order to improve the effectiveness of retrieval. The character by character approach to IR has been ...

This report considers combining information to improve retrieval. The vector space model has been extended so different classes of data are associated with distinct concept types and their respective subvectors. Two collections with multiple concept ...

The importance of a thesaurus in the successful operation of an information retrieval system is well recognized. Yet techniques which support the automatic generation of thesauri remain largely undiscovered. This paper describes one approach to the ...

In an era of online retrieval, it is appropriate to offer guidance to users wishing to improve their initial queries. One form of such guidance could be short lists of suggested terms gathered from feedback, nearest neighbors, and term variants of ...

Since October 1985, the automatic indexing system AIR/PHYS has been used in the input production of the physics data base of the Fachinformationsentrum Karlsruhe/West Germany. The texts to be indexed are abstracts written in English. The system of ...

This paper gives an overview of the ongoing research in the Active Data Bases project at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. In this project we are specifying and building a system that helps a user in his search for useful and interesting information in ...

The concept of a large-scale information retrieval network incorporating heterogeneous retrieval systems and users is introduced, and the necessary components for enabling term-based searching of any database by untrained end-users are outlined. We ...

Planning the evaluation of an information retrieval system involves two steps: first, a determination of performance descriptors and measures appropriate to the system objectives and, secondly, a development of an evaluation design which ensures the ...

This paper addresses the problem of building expert interfaces to information retrieval systems. In particular, the problem of augmenting the capabilities of such interfaces with user modeling features is discussed and the main benefits of this approach ...

This paper describes how a language for building interfaces to information systems, that is being developed by the Office of Research at OCLC, can be linked to an artificial intelligence environment, Poplog. A demonstration system, showing how Poplog ...

Efficiency in databases is a major requirement. This paper presents some solutions to cope with this problem. One solution is to execute operations in parallel: this is done in the “Delta Driven Computer” DDC, which is a multiprocessor machine with ...

Up to now, most of the retrieving systems are founded on a Boolean selection mechanism. It appears that this way of doing is not powerful enough to deal with some applications, especially when the size (number) of the results must be controlled. In that ...