Patent ID: 7308444
Filing Date: 2007-12-11
Classification: G06F,Y10S

Abstract:
1. An information handling mechanism to determine if an information source is applicable to a given information need comprising a) an interface connected to a communication channel for receiving a communication from a user; b) a specialist database containing information relevant to a specialist subject; c) means for identifying concepts in the user communication; d) means for generating concept models indicating occurrences of concepts in the specialist database and in a less specialist database; e) means for calculating relative probability, responsive to the means for generating concept models and the means for identifying concepts in the user communication, that the identified concepts could have been generated by each concept model and to provide an output indicative of the relevance of the specialist database to the communication; and f) an action selector for generating a signal, responsive to the output of the means for calculating relative probability, arranged either to give a user an indication of the relevance of the specialist database or to automatically redirect the communication in a way dependent on such relevance.