Using COTS Search Engines and Custom Query Strategies at CLEF

This paper presents a system for bilingual information retrieval using commercial off-the-shelf search engines (COTS). Several custom query construction, expansion and translation strategies are compared. We present the experiments and the corresponding results for the CLEF 2004 event

A Word Sense-Oriented User Interface for Interactive Multilingual Text Retrieval

In this paper we present an interface for supporting a user in an interactive cross-language search process using semantic classes. In order to enable users to access multilingual information, different problems have to be solved: disambiguating and translating the query words, as well as categorizing and presenting the results appropriately. Therefore, we first give a brief introduction to word sense disambiguation, cross-language text retrieval and document categorization and finally describe recent achievements of our research towards an interactive multilingual retrieval system. We focus especially on the problem of browsing and navigation of the different word senses in one source and possibly several target languages. In the last part of the paper, we discuss the developed user interface and its functionalities in more detail

Deriving query suggestions for site search

Modern search engines have been moving away from simplistic interfaces that aimed at satisfying a user's need with a single-shot query. Interactive features are now integral parts of web search engines. However, generating good query modification suggestions remains a challenging issue. Query log analysis is one of the major strands of work in this direction. Although much research has been performed on query logs collected on the web as a whole, query log analysis to enhance search on smaller and more focused collections has attracted less attention, despite its increasing practical importance. In this article, we report on a systematic study of different query modification methods applied to a substantial query log collected on a local website that already uses an interactive search engine. We conducted experiments in which we asked users to assess the relevance of potential query modification suggestions that have been constructed using a range of log analysis methods and different baseline approaches. The experimental results demonstrate the usefulness of log analysis to extract query modification suggestions. Furthermore, our experiments demonstrate that a more fine-grained approach than grouping search requests into sessions allows for extraction of better refinement terms from query log files. © 2013 ASIS&T

Using Windmill Expansion for Document Retrieval

SEMIOTIKS aims to utilise online information to support the crucial decision–making of those military and civilian agencies involved in the humanitarian removal of landmines in areas of conflict throughout the world. An analysis of the type of information required for such a task has given rise to four main areas of research: information retrieval, document annotation, summarisation and visualisation. The first stage of the research has focused on information retrieval, and a new algorithm, “Windmill Expansion” (WE) has been proposed to do this. The algorithm uses retrieval feedback techniques for automated query expansion in order to improve the effectiveness of information retrieval. WE is based on the extraction of human–generated written phases for automated query expansion. Top and Second Level expansion terms have been generated and their usefulness evaluated. The evaluation has concentrated on measuring the degree of overlap between the retrieved URLs. The less the overlap, the more useful the information provided. The Top Level expansion terms were found to provide 90% of useful URLs, and the Second Level 83% of useful URLs. Although there was a decline of useful URLs from the Top Level to the Second Level, the quantity of relevant information retrieved has increased. The originality of SEMIOTIKS lies in its use of the WE algorithm to help non–domain specific experts automatically explore domain words for relevant and precise information retrieval

Personalized Web Search Techniques - A Review

Searching is one of the commonly used task on the Internet. Search engines are the basic tool of the internet, from which related information can be collected according to the specified query or keyword given by the user, and are extremely popular for recurrently used sites. With the remarkable development of the World Wide Web (WWW), the information search has grown to be a major business segment of a global, competitive and money-making market. A perfect search engine is the one which should travel through all the web pages inthe WWW and should list the related information based on the given user keyword. In spite of the recent developments on web search technologies, there are still many conditions in which search engine users obtains the non-relevant search results from the search engines. A personalized Web search has various levels of efficiency for different users, queries, and search contexts. Even though personalized search has been a major research area for many years and many personalization approaches have been examined, it is still uncertain whether personalization is always significant on different queries for diverse users and under different search contexts. This paper focusses on the survey of many efficient personalized Web search approaches which were proposed by many authors

Relevance feedback and query expansion for searching the web: a model for searching a digital library

A fully operational large scale digital library is likely to be based on a distributed architecture and because of this it is likely that a number of independent search engines may be used to index different overlapping portions of the entire contents of the library. In any case, different media, text, audio, image, etc., will be indexed for retrieval by different search engines so techniques which provide a coherent and unified search over a suite of underlying independent search engines are thus likely to be an important part of navigating in a digital library. In this paper we present an architecture and a system for searching the world's largest DL, the world wide web. What makes our system novel is that we use a suite of underlying web search engines to do the bulk of the work while our system orchestrates them in a parallel fashion to provide a higher level of information retrieval functionality. Thus it is our meta search engine and not the underlying direct search engines that provide the relevance feedback and query expansion options for the user. The paper presents the design and architecture of the system which has been implemented, describes an initial version which has been operational for almost a year, and outlines the operation of the advanced version

CHORUS Deliverable 2.2: Second report - identification of multi-disciplinary key issues for gap analysis toward EU multimedia search engines roadmap

After addressing the state-of-the-art during the first year of Chorus and establishing the existing landscape in multimedia search engines, we have identified and analyzed gaps within European research effort during our second year. In this period we focused on three directions, notably technological issues, user-centred issues and use-cases and socio- economic and legal aspects. These were assessed by two central studies: firstly, a concerted vision of functional breakdown of generic multimedia search engine, and secondly, a representative use-cases descriptions with the related discussion on requirement for technological challenges. Both studies have been carried out in cooperation and consultation with the community at large through EC concertation meetings (multimedia search engines cluster), several meetings with our Think-Tank, presentations in international conferences, and surveys addressed to EU projects coordinators as well as National initiatives coordinators. Based on the obtained feedback we identified two types of gaps, namely core technological gaps that involve research challenges, and “enablers”, which are not necessarily technical research challenges, but have impact on innovation progress. New socio-economic trends are presented as well as emerging legal challenges

IEAD: A Novel One-Line Interface to Query Astronomical Science Archives

In this article I present IEAD, a new interface for astronomical science databases. It is based on a powerful, yet simple, syntax designed to completely abstract the user from the structure of the underlying database. The programming language chosen for its implementation, JavaScript, makes it possible to interact directly with the user and to provide real-time information on the parsing process, error messages, and the name resolution of targets; additionally, the same parsing engine is used for context-sensitive autocompletion. Ultimately, this product should significantly simplify the use of astronomical archives, inspire more advanced uses of them, and allow the user to focus on what scientific research to perform, instead of on how to instruct the computer to do it.Comment: 13 pages, PASP in pres

Extending information retrieval system model to improve interactive web searching.

The research set out with the broad objective of developing new tools to support Web information searching. A survey showed that a substantial number of interactive search tools were being developed but little work on how these new developments fitted into the general aim of helping people find information. Due to this it proved difficult to compare and analyse how tools help and affect users and where they belong in a general scheme of information search tools. A key reason for a lack of better information searching tools was identified in the ill-suited nature of existing information retrieval system models. The traditional information retrieval model is extended by synthesising work in information retrieval and information seeking research. The purpose of this new holistic search model is to assist information system practitioners in identifying, hypothesising, designing and evaluating Web information searching tools. Using the model, a term relevance feedback tool called ‘Tag and Keyword’ (TKy) was developed in a Web browser and it was hypothesised that it could improve query reformulation and reduce unnecessary browsing. The tool was laboratory experimented and quantitative analysis showed statistical significances in increased query reformulations and in reduced Web browsing (per query). Subjects were interviewed after the experiment and qualitative analysis revealed that they found the tool useful and saved time. Interestingly, exploratory analysis on collected data identified three different methods in which subjects had utilised the TKy tool. The research developed a holistic search model for Web searching and demonstrated that it can be used to hypothesise, design and evaluate information searching tools. Information system practitioners using it can better understand the context in which their search tools are developed and how these relate to users’ search processes and other search tools