Using context to integrate Hypermedia with Information Retrieval Systems

Hypermedia and information retrieval take different approaches in accessing information. For this reason it makes sense to integrate both systems in one where advantages can be enhanced and disadvantages eliminated.This thesis presents the evolution and implementation of a new model of integration between these two information-seeking approaches both at document and abstract access levels bearing in mind the use of more structured information usually associated with hypermedia and more content information usually associated with information retrieval. In the development, an open and flexible information retrieval tool is considered as part of the model. Special care is taken with the modelling of the multimedia context indexing by considering hypermedia structure metadata from both document level and abstract level. Overall, this process enables a smoother transition between navigation and retrieval, whatever media are considered.A method of evaluating has been proposed and performed in order to find metadata weight assignment strategies for context indexing and retrieval of multimedia. The fact that different hypermedia applications and their authors use different hypermedia development facilities and different authoring styles is taken into consideration by using five distinct test collections.</p