Knowledge assistant

Abstract

When a user is performing some knowledge related task she has information-needs that are related to the given writing task. Nowadays, we have vast amounts of information within our reach. The World Wide Web is the largest information medium from which users can search for and retrieve information on many different subjects. When a user is searching for information from the WWW she might find it difficult to find the information she needs from the very huge amount of information available. Moreover, since personal computer can store increasingly more data, personal information spaces store thousands of documents. A user's personal information space may store information which satisfies the user's information need. People may find it difficult to cope with all the existing information. A common problem that users face nowadays is "information overload" that make a writing task more difficult. Tools that assist the user in coping with information overload are needed and various tools have been and are being developed each of which help the user in a different way to tackle this problem. Knowledge Assistant (KA) is a just-in-time information retrieval system whose aim is to help the user in writing her piece of work and saving time when researching for information. KA proactively and autonomously observes the user while performing her writing task. It uses the text of the current document to automatically create queries which are sent to multiple information-seeking sources, such as the search engines, to discover relevant documents on behalf of the user. Potentially useful suggestions are automatically presented by KA to the user as she is carrying out her written task. KA provides both a user-profile and relevance feedback mechanism which allows it to effectively adapt to the user.