Benefits

Last Updated (Friday, 29 February 2008 23:44)

1. Benefits

Searching can be split into two components.

The first is recovery – where you know a text exists and you are trying to retrieve it and discovery where you are unaware of the texts existence in the first place. Recovery is done reasonably well by conventional approaches to search but discovery is much more difficult and is hardly addressed at all by conventional approaches. SOPHIA addresses both these components of search.

As SOPHIA provides a topical overview of the collection related to the users query it enables intuitive thematic based search. This

• helps user understand their current search context – helping them to more effectively meet their current information needs

• facilitates searching by meaning not just key words – therefore it is extremely intuitive.

• enables retrieval of relevant information even if it doesn’t exactly match the words or phrases in the query – this reduces the need to reform queries using different language – improving efficiency (enables novice search like an expert)

• minimises the risk of missing important documents that use different terminology (ie synonyms) to express similar ideas - increasing satisfaction

• facilitates unearthing of vital information that can be difficult to find by the conventional keyword approach. SOPHIA identifies the implicit semantic links among texts and can unearth semantically related documents for consideration even if they don’t contain the search terms used in the users query – improving competency

• provides an understanding of the natural thematical structure of your data – increasing your understanding of your domain leading to more intelligent query formation & more effective retrievals

Users have different search needs at different times depending on their goals (do they want to find 1 relevant document for a reference or all relevant documents as part of an in depth research project) and experience (a novice will search differently to an expert).

SOPHIA addresses these issues by catering for numerous search scenarios, depending on the circumstances of the user

• “I have a clear idea of what it is I am looking for and can use good descriptors to find it” (Boolean search) – use Focused search

• “I am unsure of exactly what it is I am looking for but will recognise it when I see it” – use Diverse search. This provides an overview of diverse themes (related to the search terms) to enable user to gradually refine their search needs

• “Here is an exemplar document typifying what I am looking for - what other documents are conceptually similar?”- use Query by example

Word Sense disambiguation – SOPHIA has the power to differentiate between different contexts of the same word – eg Java – is it a country, coffee or programming language?

SOPHIA enables document categorisation/classification

SOPHIA is multilingual (all European based languages)