Providing a networked future for interpersonal information retrieval: InfoVine and user modelling
The Internet and Intranet provide the potential for people to access a great deal more information from databases which were not previously available to them. They can also facilitate connections between people who previously did not know one another. These links to other people are valuable, as they help the individual to filter and interpret the plethora of information to which s/he now has access. This is because an important part of information-seeking behaviour is interpersonal. The existence of user profiles within a system has the potential to allow interpersonal information retrieval in information systems. This paper proposes a novel approach for future Intranet communication. A software system, InfoVine, which has been developed by the authors and is based on this approach, shows how user models can help in performing interpersonal information retrieval and in viewing people as an index to information. The benefits of the InfoVine approach are discussed in the context of user profiling for information retrieval. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.
user modelling networked information retrieval sdi