Unlike current IR systems, which treat users anonymously, Haystack learns about its user's knowledge, vocabulary, and habits and uses this information to provide retrieval that matches the needs of its user. Web search engines now play an integral role in our daily activities, showing how important the retrieval of information is to effective work. These web search engines fill the role traditionally held by libraries. Everyone who accesses them is treated in the same anonymous fashion.
Nobody begins their search at the library.
Instead, we always start by searching for information in our bookshelves. We find these small repositories better than libraries for many reasons. When our bookshelves fail, we still avoid the library, turning first to those colleagues who we knowledge and judgment we trust to steer us towards useful information. We let users organize and annotate this information to make it easily accessible. And the system adapts over time as it learns about the query and retrieval habits of its user.