Koru search engine
Koru is a new search interface that offers effective domain-independent knowledge-based information retrieval. Koru exhibits an understanding of the topics involved in both queries and documents, allowing them to be matched more accurately and evolving queries automatically and interactively. This understanding is mined from the vast investment of manual effort and judgement that is Wikipedia This open, constantly evolving encyclopedia yields manually-defined yet inexpensive structures that can be specifically tailored to expose the topics, terminology and semantics of individual document collections.
Koru exhibits an understanding of the topics of both queries and documents. This allows it to
- expand queries automatically and
- help guide the user as they evolve their queries interactively.
The interface is illustrated in the screenshot above. Implementation is based on the AJAX framework, which provides a highly reactive interface couched in nothing more than the standard elements of a web page. The upper area is a classic search box in which the user has entered the query american airlines security. Below are three panels; query topics, query results, and the document tray. What the figure does not convey is that to avoid clutter not all the panels are visible at any given time. There are three possible configurations, which relate to three stages of expected user behavior:
- Building an appropriate query. This involves adding and removing phrases until the query and corresponding list of query results satisfies the user’s information need. At this stage two panels are visible: query topics and query results (the leftmost two panels in the screenshot).
- Browsing the document list. Once a suitable list of documents is returned, the user must determine the most relevant ones and judge whether they warrant further study. At this point the panels in Figure 1 slide across so that only the rightmost two (query results and document tray) are visible.
- In-depth reading of a chosen document. Having located a worthy document, the user then devotes time to actually reading the relevant sections. Here only the documents tray is needed. Anything else would be a distraction.
The Koru search engine is part of David Milne's PhD and is still under development.
References
David Milne, Ian H. Witten, David M. Nichols, A Knowledge-Based Search Engine Powered by Wikipedia, http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.148.2362&rep=rep1&type=pdf