Query Terms Abstraction Layers

Abstract. A problem with traditional information retrieval systems is that they typically retrieve information without an explicitly defined domain of interest to the user. Consequently, the system presents a lot of information that is of little relevance to the user. Ideally, the queries ’ real intentions should be exposed and reflected in the way the underlying retrieval machinery can deal with them. In this paper we propose using abstraction layers to differentiate on the query terms. We explain why we believe this differentiation of query terms is necessary and the potentials of this approach. The whole retrieval system is under development as part of a Semantic Web standardization project for the Norwegian oil and gas industry.

Research on Ontology-Driven Information Retrieval

Abstract. An increasing number of recent information retrieval systems make use of ontologies to help the users clarify their information needs and come up with semantic representations of documents. A particular concern here is the integration of these semantic approaches with traditional search technology. The research presented in this paper examines how ontologies can be efficiently applied to large-scale search systems for the web. We describe how these systems can be enriched with adapted ontologies to provide both an in-depth understanding of the user's needs as well as an easy integration with standard vector-space retrieval systems. The ontology concepts are adapted to the domain terminology by computing a feature vector for each concept. Later, the feature vectors are used to enrich a provided query. The whole retrieval system is under development as part of a larger Semantic Web standardization project for the Norwegian oil & gas sector.