AID FOR EFFECTIVE SEARCHING
The University of California, Berkeley, School of Information
Management & Systems has been awarded a $954,180 research
contract to make searching for documents and for data easier
and more cost-effective. The project is called
"Search Support for Unfamiliar Metadata Vocabularies"
Searching is likely to be effective and efficient only when the
searcher is familiar with the classification, categorizing, and
indexing schemes ("metadata vocabularies") being searched.
The rapid increase in the number of databases that can be accessed
over the Internet means that searches will be increasingly
require use of indexes and classification schemes that are
unfamiliar to person searching.
To provide a cost-effective remedy, the researchers will
develop Entry Vocabulary Modules that accept topical statements
in the searcher's terms and respond with a
ranked list of terms in the system's vocabulary.
The Principal Investigator for the three year project is
Professor Michael Buckland, with Professor Ray Larson,
Associate Professor in the School and Dr Fred Gey,
Assistant Director of campus UC Data Archive & Technical
Assistance and a recent Ph.D graduate of the School.
This project builds directly on several years research in the
School on improved searching techniques.
The Classification Clustering technique developed by
Professor Ray Larson for the CHESHIRE I system will be
used with probabilistic document retrieval algorithms
developed by Dr Gey with support from the National Science
Foundation.
The contract was awarded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
Information Management Program
(DARPA Contract N66001-97-C-8541; AO# F477) and will run from July 1997 through June 2000.
A project website has been started at
http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/research/metadata/
Inquiries to Michael Buckland 510-642 3159, buckland@sims.berkeley.edu