Hard Queries can be Addressed with Query Splitting Plus Stepping Stones and Pathways

A key finding of the Reliable Information Access Workshop of 2003 was that in collections like those used for TREC 6-8, there are a number of hard queries for which no current search engine can return a high quality set of results. Our Stepping Stones and Pathways (SSP) approach may yield an effective solution to such hard problems, as well as support exploration of collections of content not well known to a person (with broad interest and/or complex information needs). Our initial and promising testing of SSP had users prepare two separate short queries in order to launch processing. However, since beginning with a single information need is a more typical initial situation, we have extended the SSP research by exploring query splitting, especially as might apply to handling hard queries. This paper summarizes our recent results and identifies some of the future work needed.