University of Malta  Dept. of Computer Science and AI  
FACULTY OF SCIENCE  
University of Malta  
TEL: (+356) 2340 2519      FAX: (+356) 21320539

 


Intelligent Information Retrieval Research and Development Group

Scope

We investigate new ways of indexing documents in a collection to improve the quality of documents retrieved in response to a user query.

Research Group Members

Dr. Christopher Staff

Ms. Melodie Grima
Ms. Melissa Anne Mifsud
Mr. Aaron Galea
Mr. Joel Azzopardi

Past Members

Mr. Walter Vassallo (2002-03)
Mr. Antoine Aquilina (2000-01)

Research Activities

Publications

Vassallo, Walter. 2003. SearchQuest: Enterprise-Wide On-line Library System. Final Year Project Report. University of Malta.

Mifsud, Melissa Anne. 2002. HIR: A new model of information based on interpretations of information. Final Year Project Report. University of Malta.

Aquilina, Antoine. 2001. A Personal Web Agent to Assist with Query Formulation. Final Year Project Report. University of Malta.


Overview of the Research Group

Inspired mainly by research into adaptive hypertext systems, our basic premise is that the same information can mean different things to different users, and therefore each meaning supported by a document can be separately represented by an interpretation. We investigate this premise in the domain of information retrieval in two different ways. We always assume that information may be represented using different index terms to support different meanings. However, in one project we assume that the meaning of a document depends on the juxtaposition of related documents in a user's private collection (e.g., a bookmark file), whereas in the other project we assume that the different interpretations of a document are available to all users.

The first project has already produced a prototype application called Pawaq, a Personal Web Agent which assists with Query Formulation. Pawaq assists users by automatically constructing queries based on the descriptions of bookmarked documents. Obviously, if Pawaq has not already seen documents that are of interest to a user, it is unable to provide assistance with query formulation, unless collaborating users agree to share their own personal descriptions of interests. The second project investigates ways of automatically creating multiple meaningful interpretations of information, without requiring user intervention. We assume, however, that documents exist in a structured document collection, such as a document hierarchy or the Web.

Pawaq is being extended to learn how to cluster information based on bookmark files.

HIR is a method of information indexing motivated by HyperContext (see our research into Adaptive Hypertext Systems). We create multiple index entries for each document based on its multiple access paths (ways in which it can be reached). Initial results, which need to be confirmed, show an improvement over Google in quality of retrieved results.

SearchQuest is an initial attempt to learn synonyms by observing document distributions in response to user queries.

Related Courses

BSc IT (Hons) degree:

CSA3080: Adaptive Hypertext Systems I
CSA4020: Multimedia Systems: Adaptive Hypermedia Systems

Publications

Projects

A new model for Information Retrieval based on interpretations of information.

Extending Pawaq to provide adaptive browsing support.

Template-based Fact-finding on the WWW.

Question-Answering Subsystems for Just-in-Time Systems.

Links to information about these projects will be added as soon as possible.


Related Research and Development Groups

Adaptive Hypertext Systems

How to Collaborate on research and development in this group

For more information about this research and development group, please contact Chris Staff at cstaff@cs.um.edu.mt or phone him on +356-23402506. For general information about collaborating in research and development groups, please visit this page.

If you are interested in reading a postgraduate degree in this area, please e-mail Chris Staff at cstaff@cs.um.edu.mt, after reading the Postgraduate Enquiries information.

Contact details

Chris Staff, Department of Computer Science and AI, University of Malta, Tal-Qroqq, Msida MSD 06, Malta
E-mail: cstaff@cs.um.edu.mt
Web: http://www.cs.um.edu.mt/~cstaff
Phone: 00-356-23402506
Fax: 00-356-21320539


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