Hybrid-search and storage of semi-structured information

Given today's tangle of digital information, one of the hardest tasks for computer users of information systems is finding anything in the mess. For a number of well documented reasons including the amazing growth in the Internet's popularity and the drop in the cost of storage, the amount of information on the net as well as on a user's local computer, has increased dramatically in recent years. Although this readily available information should be extremely beneficial for computer users, paradoxically it is now much harder to find anything. Many different solutions have been proposed to the general information seeking task of users, but few if any have addressed the needs of individuals or have leveraged the benefit of single-user interaction. The Haystack project is an attempt to answer the needs of the individual user. Once the user's information is represented in Haystack, the types of questions users may ask are highly varied. In this thesis we will propose a means of representing information in a robust framework within Haystack. Once the information is represented we describe a mechanism by which the diverse questions of the individual can be answered. This novel method functions by using a combination of existing information systems. We will call this combined system a hybrid-search system.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

1998

Author dc:creator

• Adar, Eytan, 1975-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• David R. Karger and Lynn A. Stein.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/46274

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/46274