ASIST: Use of Classification in Information Seeking Use of Classification in Information Seeking
Wednesday, November 02, 2005, 3:30

Barbara Kwasnik, Use of Classification in Information Retrieval
Classification:  partitioning things into meaningful clusters
Two processes in parallel:

• Clustering – finding similar attributes
• Discrimination – setting up boundaries

Why classify-

• Finding/Re-finding
• Browsing
• Communicate
• Knowledge representation

Challenges on query formation

• Difficult to articulate a request
• User may not know what is available or what there is to choose from
• Strategy for level of precision may not be obvious

System challenges

• Expressiveness
• Levels of precision or granularity
• Intra/inter indexer inconsistency

Challenges in matching

Joseph Busch, Classification in the workplace
People use classification for IR all the time – shopping on line, browse by facets

(compare to Capra article in IEEE Computer, when people look for facts online they go directly to classified pages that are analogs of classified print guides)

Study, taxonomy browsing is much faster than searching
Also people recreate info when they can’t find what they need, so this costs

When doing these taxonomies, do enough, don’t try to exhaustively and completely represent the world’s knowledge.

Hur-Li Lee, Navigating across yahoo directories
  ¶ 10:11 PM| |cites (technorati) |