Adaptive Information Retrieval Based on Task Context

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Abstract

This chapter discusses using context in Information Retrieval systems and Intelligent Assistant Agents in order to improve the performance of these systems. The notion of context is introduced and the state of the art in Contextual Information Retrieval is presented which illustrates various categories of contexts that can be taken into account when solving user queries. In this framework, the authors focus on the issue of task-based context which takes into account the current activity the user is involved in when he puts a query. Finally they introduce promising research directions that promote the use of Intelligent Assistant Agents capable of symbolic reasoning about users’ tasks for supporting the query process.