Knowledge and user-generated content is proliferating on the web in scientific publications, information portals and online social media. This knowledge explosion has continued to outpace technological innovation in efficient information access technologies. In this paper, we describe methods and technologies for “Conversational Search” as an innovative solution to facilitate easier information access and reduce the information overload for users.
Conversational Search is an interactive and collaborative information finding interaction. The participants in this interaction engage in social conversations aided with an intelligent information agent (Cobot) that provides contextually relevant search recommendations. The collaborative and conversational search activity helps users make faster and more informed search and discovery. It also helps the agent learn about conversations with interactions and social feedback to make better recommendations. Conversational search leverages the social discovery process by integrating web information retrieval along with the social interactions.
Read the paper:
Collaborative Information Access: A Conversational Search Approach
by Saurav Sahay, Anu Venkatesh, Ashwin Ram
ICCBR-09 Workshop on Reasoning from Experiences on the Web (WebCBR-09), Seattle, July 2009www.cc.gatech.edu/faculty/ashwin/papers/er-09-05.pdf