Query refinement is the process of providing Web information seekers with alternative wordings for expressing their information needs. Although alternative query formulations may contribute to the improvement of retrieval results, nevertheless their realization by Web users is intrinsically limited in that alternative query wordings convey explicit information about neither their degree nor the...

This paper presents an innovative virtual assistant system, which aims to address older adults’ needs in a professional environment by proposing promising and innovative virtual assistance mechanisms. The system, named CogniWin, is expected to alleviate eventual age related memory degradation and gradual decrease of other cognitive capabilities (i.e. speed of processing new information, concent...

The main principle of the Library 2.0 is in the fact that the information has to be spread from the library to the user and viceversa, to allow fast and permanent adaptation of the library services. Within the framework of the implementation of the “Departmental Plan of the Public Services Reading” by the “General Council of Moselle”, the division of the public reading develops a departmental p...

Nowadays research and development activities are accompanied by an increasing focus on future user needs in the field of multimedia retrieval. The fast growing of multimedia data repositories is an undeniable fact, so specialized tools allowing storage, indexing and retrieval of multimedia content have to be developed, and in addition easy-to-use content exchange is needed. The transition from ...

Document triage is the critical point in the information seeking process when the user first decides the relevance of a document to their information need. This complex process is not yet well understood, and subsequently we have undertaken a comparison of this task in both electronic and paper media. The results reveal that in each medium human judgement is influenced by different factors, and...

One of the main issues in the field of information retrieval is to bridge the terminological gap existing between the way in which users specify their information needs and the way in which queries are expressed. One of the approaches for this purpose, called Rule Based Information Retrieval by Computer (RUBRIC), involves the use of production rules to capture user query concepts (or topics). I...

In this paper, we describe the design and development of personal information assistant (PIA), a system aiming to meet individual needs of the searchers. The system’s goal is to provide more up-to-date and relevant information to users with respect to their needs and interests. The main component of the system is a profile learner for capturing temporal user needs, based on implicit feedback ga...

Quantitative estimates of physician information need reported in the literature vary by orders of magnitude. This article offers a framework for explicitly defining the types of information that clinicians use and the various states of information need on which different studies have focused. Published reports seem to be in agreement that physicians have many clinical questions in the course of...

Introduction. The study contributes to the conceptual investigation of the motivators for information seeking. The issue is examined by drawing on the ideas of the expectancy-value theory, which is a major psychological approach to motivation. Method. A conceptual analysis was made by focusing on how the cognitive and affective motivational attributes of the constructs of information need and u...

Quantitative estimates of physician information need reported in the literature vary by orders of magnitude. This article offers a framework for explicitly defining the types of information that clinicians use and the various states of information need on which different studies have focused. Published reports seem to be in agreement that physicians have many clinical questions in the course of...