Automatic query formulations in information retrieval.

Modern information retrieval systems are designed to supply relevant information in response to requests received from the user population. In most retrieval environments the search requests consist of keywords, or index terms, interrelated by appropriate Boolean operators. Since it is difficult for untrained users to generate effective Boolean search requests, trained search intermediaries are normally used to translate original statements of user need into useful Boolean search formulations. Methods are introduced in this study which reduce the role of the search intermediaries by making it possible to generate Boolean search formulations completely automatically from natural language statements provided by the system patrons. Frequency considerations are used automatically to generate appropriate term combinations as well as Boolean connectives relating the terms. Methods are covered to produce automatic query formulations both in a standard Boolean logic system, as well as in an extended Boolean system in which the strict interpretation of the connectives is relaxed. Experimental results are supplied to evaluate the effectiveness of the automatic query formulation process, and methods are described for applying the automatic query formulation process in practice.     

Mix and match: combining terms and operators for successful Web searches

This paper presents a detailed analysis of the structure and components of queries written by experimental participants in a study that manipulated two factors found to affect end-user information retrieval performance: training in Boolean logic and the type of search interface. As reported previously, we found that both Boolean training and the use of an assisted interface improved the participants' ability to find correct responses to information requests. Here, we examine the impact of these training and interface manipulations on the Boolean operators and search terms that comprise the submitted queries. Our analysis shows that both Boolean training and the use of an assisted interface improved the participants' ability to correctly utilize various operators. An unexpected finding is that this training also had a positive impact on term selection. The terms and, to a lesser extent, the operators comprising a query were important factors affecting the participants' performance in query tasks. Our findings demonstrate that even small training interventions can improve the users' search performance and highlight the need for additional information retrieval research into how search interfaces can provide superior support to today's untrained users of the Web.     

New approach to the problem of information system effectiveness evaluation

The object of this paper is to present a new kind of approach to the problem of information system effectiveness evaluation as based on the theory of fuzzy sets. On the basis of this theory, the concepts of relevance and pertinence, which are the basic concepts used in determining the indices of information system effectiveness evaluation, have been defined. Assuming that in evaluating the effectiveness of information systems, one should consider separately the problem of quality evaluation of the transformation of the contents of documents and information requests into their search patterns and the problem of quality evaluation of the process of profile control of a document set of the information system, definitions have been given of parameters of quality evaluation of the transformation of the contents of documents and information requests into their search patterns with regard to a given information request as well as of parameters of quality evaluation of the process with regard to the whole set of information requests under examination. Besides, parameters of quality evaluation of the process of profile control of a document set of the information system have been defined. The parameters of effectiveness evaluation of information systems put forward in this paper take account of the fact that both evaluation of the relevance and evaluation of the pertinence of documents are of a continuous character.     

Model-driven formative evaluation of exploratory search: A study under a sensemaking framework

The evaluation of exploratory search relies on the ongoing paradigm shift from focusing on the search algorithm to focusing on the interactive process. This paper proposes a model-driven formative evaluation approach, in which the goal is not the evaluation of a specific system, per se, but the exploration of new design possibilities. This paper gives an example of this approach where a model of sensemaking was used to inform the evaluation of a basic exploratory search system(s) in the context of a sensemaking task. The model suggested that, rather than just looking at simple search performance measures, we should examine closely the interwoven, interactive processes of both representation construction and information seeking. Participants were asked to make sense of an unfamiliar topic using an augmented query-based search system. The processes of representation construction and information seeking were captured and analyzed using data from experiment notes, interviews, and a system log. The data analysis revealed users’ sources of ideas for structuring representations and a tightly coupled relationship between search and representation construction in their exploratory searches. For example, users strategically used search to find useful structure ideas instead of just accumulating information facts. Implications for improving current search systems and designing new systems are discussed.     

产业集群网络结构特征、知识搜索与企业竞争优势

网络结构特征是影响企业竞争优势的重要变量,本文以组织理论为基础,从利用式-探索式知识搜索视角出发,构建“产业集群网络结构特征、知识搜索与企业竞争优势”的关系研究模型。通过对178家软件企业问卷调查数据的实证检验,发现产业集群网络结构特征的网络稳定性和位置中心度正向影响知识搜索和企业竞争优势;利用式知识搜索对企业竞争优势有正向影响;利用式知识搜索在产业集群网络结构特征与企业竞争优势关系中起中介作用。企业在集群中应强化网络观和提高知识搜索能力,促进创新资源的流通和共享,实现集群中的知识转移、利用与再生,从而提升企业竞争优势。     

Understanding in-context interaction: An investigation into on-the-go mobile search

Recent years have seen a profound change in how most users interact with search engines: the majority of search requests now come from mobile devices, which are used in a number of distracting contexts. This use of mobile devices in various situational contexts away from a desk presents a range of novel challenges for users and, consequently, possibilities for interface improvements. However, there is at present a lack of work that evaluates interaction in such contexts to understand what effects context and mobility have on behaviour and errors and, ultimately, users’ search performance.Through a controlled study, in which we simulate walking conditions on a treadmill and obstacle course, we use a combination of interaction logs and multiple video streams to capture interaction behaviour as participants (n = 24) complete simple search tasks. Using a bespoke tagging tool to analyse these recordings, we investigate how situational context and distractions impact user behaviour and performance, contrasting this with users in a baseline, seated condition. Our findings provide insights into the issues these common contexts cause, how users adapt and how such interfaces could be improved.     

Mathematical model of time-effective information retrieval system based on the theory of fuzzy sets

Search patterns of documents and information requests are their better or worse representatives only, so it is important to carry on examinations on possibilities of designing self-learning information retrieval systems. Another important question is to elaborate such an organization of document search pattern set as to obtain an acceptable response time of the information system to a given information request.A self-learning process of the proposed information system consists in the determination—on a set of document and information request search patterns—of the similarity relation according to L. A. Zadeh.The organization of a set of document search patterns proposed in the paper ensures the limitation of document search pattern set searching process—when retrieving a response to a given information request—to one (or several) subset from previously determined subsets. This makes the information system response time acceptable. The proposed information retrieval strategy is discussed in terms of fuzzy sets.     

基于Lucene的索引系统的设计与实现

索引系统是搜索引擎的数据大本营,在搜索引擎发展早期,能够索引的网页数量代表了整个行业的技术发展水平。Lucene全文检索技术是信息检索领域广泛使用的基本技术,它是一个优秀的开源全文本搜索技术框架,本文详细分析了索引系统相关技术和Lucene的索引系统结构。     

A “Grand Challenge”: Measuring Information Societies

Even though there has been a proliferation of e-society measures in recent years, analyses of the metrics of the “information society” are still far from responsive to the needs of many stakeholders and continue to suffer from a number of serious limitations. Issues in eight critical areas are briefly presented. They include: definition of the universe to be measured; definition of the objects and phenomena to include in the universe; need to establish measurements based upon solid theories; units of measurements; data sources and collection; methods of analysis and construction of indicators; target audiences; and purpose and utilization of measurements. An organized collective effort, which could provide the impetus for the development of a coherent academic field of study, is called for to address this “grand challenge.”     

Improving the performance of personal name disambiguation using web directories

Frequent requests from users to search engines on the World Wide Web are to search for information about people using personal names. Current search engines only return sets of documents containing the name queried, but, as several people usually share a personal name, the resulting sets often contain documents relevant to several people. It is necessary to disambiguate people in these result sets in order to to help users find the person of interest more readily. In the task of name disambiguation, effective measurement of similarities in the documents is a crucial step towards the final disambiguation. We propose a new method that uses web directories as a knowledge base to find common contexts in documents and uses the common contexts measure to determine document similarities. Experiments, conducted on documents mentioning real people on the web, together with several famous web directory structures, suggest that there are significant advantages in using web directories to disambiguate people compared with other conventional methods.     

EARS: An online bibliographic search and retrieval system based on ordered explosion

Ergonomics Abstracts Retrieval System (EARS) is an online bibliographic information search and retrieval system using the hierarchical subject classification of the Ergonomics Abstracts. EARS is designed using an inverted file organization and is implemented on CDC-Cyber. The data base of abstracts is organized using a fixed-length record format, where each logical record corresponds to a variable number of fixed-length physical records. Accordingly, an index for the identification of physical records from the logical records is used. The data base is inverted on a three-level hierarchical classification scheme and postings files are used for data base inversion. The data base is accessed after selectively traversing a 4-layer structure of indexes and postings files. EARS provides facilities to perform combinations of searches, limited searches, and certain editing functions. The system is currently used extensively by the Western New York Human Factors research community. The logical and physical designs of EARS, its interactive operational features, and its current expansions are described in this paper.     

Local search: A guide for the information retrieval practitioner

There are a number of combinatorial optimisation problems in information retrieval in which the use of local search methods are worthwhile. The purpose of this paper is to show how local search can be used to solve some well known tasks in information retrieval (IR), how previous research in the field is piecemeal, bereft of a structure and methodologically flawed, and to suggest more rigorous ways of applying local search methods to solve IR problems. We provide a query based taxonomy for analysing the use of local search in IR tasks and an overview of issues such as fitness functions, statistical significance and test collections when conducting experiments on combinatorial optimisation problems. The paper gives a guide on the pitfalls and problems for IR practitioners who wish to use local search to solve their research issues, and gives practical advice on the use of such methods. The query based taxonomy is a novel structure which can be used by the IR practitioner in order to examine the use of local search in IR.     

Disambiguated query suggestions and personalized content-similarity and novelty ranking of clustered results to optimize web searches

In this paper, we face the so called “ranked list problem” of Web searches, that occurs when users submit short requests to search engines. Generally, as a consequence of terms’ ambiguity and polysemy, users engage long cycles of query reformulation in an attempt to capture relevant information in the top ranked results.     

A quantitative analysis of the science research council's policy of “selectivity and concentration”

This paper presents an analysis of the peer-adjudicated grants awarded by the Science Research Council (SRC) between 1964–1975. During this period, some 12,000 grants were awarded via de peer-adjudication process representing some £120 million. Expenditures on ‘big science’ have not been included in the analysis.The aim of the analysis is to compare the intentions of SRC policy with the outcome of the decisions of the peer-review system. The conclusions pertain to two policy areas: (i) priorities, (ii) selectivity and concentration. With regard to the former, it is noted that as a proportion of total SRC commitments, the Nuclear Physics Board commitments have grown over the decade; the proportion of the Science Board's commitments have declined, especially in Chemistry, and there is no empirical evidence for increased priority for engineering. With regard to the latter, resources showed no changes in concentration index over the decade whether the data was analysed in terms of grants, scientists, departments or universities.Although in each case the outcome appears to be at variance with the policy intention, there is no evidence to suggest that either the SRC, or the scientists who constitute the peer-review system should have behaved differently. Rather, the intention has been to furnish reliable data on which future policy discussion might draw.     

Analysis of monograph obsolescence at two levels of an interlibrary loan network

Requests for monographs generated within an interlibrary loan network are analyzed for half-life statistics. It is suggested that demand represents use of the literature more completely than satisfied requests or circulation statistics. Demand in this study is characterized as either regional demand or statewide demand and is related to the level of the network where final processing of the request occurs. A negative exponential distribution is found to adequately characterize both levels of demand as a function of publication date for four subject categories. Corrected demand data is obtained by removing the growth rate of most of the available literature represented by American book publisher output. Based on over 10,000 interlibrary loan requests, negative exponential distributions describe the raw data as well as the corrected data. A shorter half-life was found for regional library demand (10.47 yr) than that found for statewide library demand (15.75 yr). Applying the correction factor to reflect the growth rate of the available literature tends to increase the half-life when compared to the raw data, and changes the ordering of subject classes with respect to ascending half-lives.     

基于技术位的企业技术搜索策略研究

文章基于适应性景观理论和重组搜索理论,给出了技术位的明确界定,并将其引入NK模型的应用,从而将企业的技术搜索置于市场竞争的背景下进行研究,通过数理模型推演,明确行业中技术位间的价值关系,并结合企业技术基础提出企业为搜索高价值技术而采取的技术搜索策略;以2006-2007年及2009-2010年有新产品产值的规模以上医药制造业企业数据为样本对理论推论进行了实证检验,结果表明：行业中相邻技术位的价值存在正相关性,企业在其占据的高价值技术位的邻近技术位及低价值技术位的非邻近技术位上进行技术搜索,能够更有效地促进企业搜索到高价值技术。     

Replicating web contents using a hybrid particle swarm optimization

We consider the problem of placing copies of objects in a distributed web server system to minimize the cost of serving read and write requests when the web servers have limited storage capacities. We formulate the problem as a 0–1 optimization problem and present a hybrid particle swarm optimization algorithm to solve it. The proposed hybrid algorithm makes use of the strong global search ability of particle swarm optimization (PSO) and the strong local search ability of tabu search to obtain high quality solutions. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated by comparing it with the genetic algorithm (GA), simple PSO, tabu search, and random placement algorithm on a variety of test cases. The simulation results indicate that the proposed hybrid approach outperforms the GA, simple PSO, and tabu search.     

Click data as implicit relevance feedback in web search

Search sessions consist of a person presenting a query to a search engine, followed by that person examining the search results, selecting some of those search results for further review, possibly following some series of hyperlinks, and perhaps backtracking to previously viewed pages in the session. The series of pages selected for viewing in a search session, sometimes called the click data, is intuitively a source of relevance feedback information to the search engine. We are interested in how that relevance feedback can be used to improve the search results quality for all users, not just the current user. For example, the search engine could learn which documents are frequently visited when certain search queries are given.     

The use of query suggestions during information search

Query suggestion is a common feature of many information search systems. While much research has been conducted about how to generate suggestions, fewer studies have been conducted about how people interact with and use suggestions. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how and when people integrate query suggestions into their searches and the outcome of this usage. The paper further investigates the relationships between search expertise, topic difficulty, and temporal segment of the search and query suggestion usage. A secondary analysis of data was conducted using data collected in a previous controlled laboratory study. In this previous study, 23 undergraduate research participants used an experimental search system with query suggestions to conduct four topic searches. Results showed that participants integrated the suggestions into their searching fairly quickly and that participants with less search expertise used more suggestions and saved more documents. Participants also used more suggestions towards the end of their searches and when searching for more difficult topics. These results show that query suggestion can provide support in situations where people have less search expertise, greater difficulty searching and at specific times during the search.