Personalized Information Access
The tremendous growth of digital information, of Internet and of the Web network has caused a huge information overload phenomen, that makes harder and harder for knowledge workers to stay informed and updated on their specific fields of interests. This situation is true in all fileds: online scientific journals and technical documentation, e-print repositories, specialized portals, corporate information systems (to name just a few) are growing every minute, and the task of timely and precisely find new information largely overcomes human capabilities. Furthermore, the standard tools for searching the online digital repositories (the Web is the most common example, but it is not the only one!) are absolutely not adequate with respect to efficiency, effectiveness, precision, timeliness, and personalization level. These criticalities call for new and innovative technologies, capable of supporting knowledge workers and researchers with new tools for automatically monitoring and filtering digital information sources on the basis of specific personal needs.
The Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and the infoFACTORY Group have developed a long research and experimental experience in the development of innovative advanced tools for personalizing Web information access. Years of research in user modeling, intelligent information retrieval, natural language processing and Web technologies have been very useful for designing, building and evaluating such systems. The Group has participated to specific research projects where the new ideas and systems have been applied and experimented in several fields.
