What is information discovery about?

Abstract

The Internet has led to an increase in the quantity and diversity of information available for searching. Furthermore, users are bombarded by a constant barrage of electronic messages in the form of e-mail, faxes, etc. This has led to a plethora of search engines, "intelligent" agents, etc., that aim to help users in their quest for relevant information, or shield them against irrelevant information. All these systems aim to identify the potentially relevant information in among a large pool of available information. No unifying underlying theory for information discovery systems exists as yet. The aim of this article is to provide a logic-based framework for information discovery, and relate this to the traditional field of information retrieval. Furthermore, the often ignored user receives special emphasis. In information discovery, a good understanding of a user's (sometimes hidden) needs and beliefs is essential. We will develop a logic-based approach to express the mechanics of information discovery, while the pragmatics are based on an analysis of the underlying informational semantics of information carriers and information needs of users.

On Domain Conceptualization

“…The latter view on information is in line with the perspective taken in e.g. the FRISCO report [17], cybernetics [37] as well as work in the context of information science and information discovery [3,60]. In this context, [37] also refers to the "difference that makes the difference".…”

“…We actually agree on this replacement, as sign is a more generic way to refer to any form of "information carrying artifact"[60] 3. Where writing a note to/for oneself could be seen as an extreme case, since the actor who reads the notes is not completely the same as the actor who wrote the note.…”

Efficient Storage and Domain-Specific Information Discovery on Semistructured Documents

“…By information discovery [PB99,HP02] we mean the extraction of relevant pieces of data from a database given a user query. Information discovery can be viewed as an extension of traditional Information Retrieval (IR), which ranks the relevance of unstructured documents given a keyword query.…”