Information Wayfinding, Part 1: A Not-So-New Metaphor
Browsing the Web. Surfing the Net. Navigating a Web site. Traversing a hierarchy. Going back. Scrolling up and down. Returning home. We’ve seen such metaphors throughout our history of using computers to interact with information. Haphazard though they may seem be, these metaphors highlight a universal reality of human psychology: we perceive the world—both physical [...]
Interaction Models for Faceted Search
Introduction Faceted search offers tremendous potential for transforming the search experience. It provides a flexible framework by which users can satisfy a wide variety of information needs, ranging from simple fact retrieval to complex exploratory search and discovery scenarios. But there is one design aspect of faceted search that is particuarly hard to get right: [...]
Search: Emergent and Extrinsic Semantics
Semantics is a term often used in the search technology and information retrieval community these days. A distinction is drawn between semantic and traditional search, implying that somehow semantic search is a more advanced or sophisticated form. My claim in this article is that there are actually two forms of semantic search: emergent and extrinsic. [...]
Hybrid Parallel Classifiers for Managing Big Data with Hierarchies
“Big Data” is one of the latest buzzwords in the IT industry nowadays. Companies are building up huge stores of data running into terabytes and more. Data hierarchies are getting bigger and bigger and more complex. At the same time, search/categorization speeds are also expected to increase. Single classifiers are now unable to deal with [...]
IR Made In Germany – The German IR Special Interest Group
Introduction – IR Made In Germany 2012 marked an exciting year for the German Information Retrieval community, when for the first time ever with Norbert Fuhr a German was awarded the prestigious Gerard Salton Award. Besides being a well-deserved personal award, this brings with it a nice appreciation of the work performed by the German [...]
Webis Group, Weimar
The Web Technology and Information Systems group, Webis for short (www.webis.de), is part of the media faculty at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. The faculty provides, among others, the study course Computer Science and Media (both bachelor and master) and has a strong commitment to research in the field of digital media and information technology. The Webis [...]
Information Retrieval between Disciplines: Computer Science and Information Science – The IR group at the University of Hildesheim
Information Retrieval Research in Germany is mainly done within the Computer Science Community represented by the Special Interest Group. But there is also a considerable amount of work done within the smaller Information Science Community in the German speaking countries. The University of Hildesheim forms a link between these otherwise largely distinct communities. Information Science [...]
New Book: Designing the Search Experience
Remember the Yahoo! Directory? It was a hand-built taxonomy that allowed users to browse and discover Internet resources. By categorizing sites by topic and location, it became the definitive map of the World Wide Web. But at the turn of the millennium, Yahoo! transformed itself from a directory into a search engine. The task of [...]
Where am I? Techniques for wayfinding and navigation in faceted search
Faceted search enables users to intuitively explore complex information spaces by progressively refining their choices in each dimension. When combined with keyword search, this approach becomes incredibly powerful: so much so that faceted search is now the dominant interaction paradigm for most eCommerce sites and is being applied to an increasingly diverse range of search and [...]
The Future of Information
Web pages are dead. The future of information—and how people interact with it—is undergoing a profound metamorphosis. Our eulogy must begin long before web pages were conceived. Before the Internet, there was the written word; the book was the preeminent artefact for disseminating and assimilating information. The Scroll and the Table of Contents In their early [...]
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