introduction multimedia
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research directions -- the information retrieval cycle

 When considering an information system, we may proceed from a simple generic software architecture, consisting of:

software architecture


However, such a database-centered notion of information system seems not to do justice to the actual support and information system must provide when considering the full information retrieval cycle:

information retrieval cycle


  1. specification of the user's information need
  2. translation into query operations
  3. search and retrieval of media objects
  4. ranking according to likelihood or relevance
  5. presentation of results and user feedback
  6. resulting in a possibly modified query
When we look at older day information retrieval applications in libraries, we see more or less the automation of card catalogs, with search functionality for keywords and headings. Modern day versions of these systems, however, offer graphical userinterfaces, electronic forms and hypertext features.

When we look at the web and how it may support digital libraries, we see some dramatic changes with respect to the card catalogue type of applications. We can now have access to a variety of sources of information, at low cost, including geographically distributed resources, due to improved networking. And, everybody is free to make information available, and what is worse, everybody seems to be doing so. Hence, the web is a continuously growing repository of information of a (very) heterogeneous kind.

Considering the web as an information retrieval system we may observe, following  [IR], that:

So, we need better (user-centered) retrieval strategies to support the full information retrieval cycle. Let me (again) mention someof the relevant (research) topics: user interfaces, information visualisation, user-profiling and navigation.
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eliens@cs.vu.nl

draft version 1 (16/5/2003)