Hermeneus

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Hermeneus Applying Philosophical Hermeneutics to Information Seeking and Retrieval Fabiano Beppler and Roberto Pacheco Knowledge Engineering and Management (EGC) The Federal University of Santa Catarina    Fred Fonseca College of Information Sciences and Technology The Pennsylvania State university If the user does not know exactly what she/he wants, how can a framework help in the information seeking process? We resorted to philosophy and to the hermeneutic circle of Heidegger and Gadamer to provide the principles of such a framework. In our implementation of the hermeneutic circle in an IS&R system users are able to develop their ideas while browsing the information and the concepts that represent the information. Our system intends to be the bridge between the user's question and the answer to be found while she/he navigates in the concepts and the instances of these concepts in a back and forth fashion. We called our framework Hermeneus following Carol Kuhlthau's idea which considered that the IR system is one intermediary that should facilitate the user to move from the initial state of information need to the goal state of resolution. Hermeneus in Greek means the interpreter or translator. Our system is intended to be the bridge between the user's question and the answer that s/he will find in the back and forth between the concepts and the instances. Domain specialists without background in IR research, can use Hermeneus to conceive information retrieval systems and then make their domain knowledge available through a powerful search tool. The resulting information retrieval system enables users to engage in a sequence of interactions not only to facilitate the search process but also to help them to understand what they are looking for. Domain specialist can configure the required modules belonging to the Hermeneus architecture: Indexing module: uses the ontology and its knowledge base to create semantic indexes. Retrieval module: responsible for retrieving ontology instances from the semantic indexes. Inference module: extracts additional information from the retrieved instances using the ontology and the knowledge base through inference and pre-configured rules. Presentation module: configure an interface that takes advantage of the ontology in order to create an interactive environment for information retrieval. After configured such modules, Hermeneus builds automatically the required mechanisms of an information retrieval system. The resulting system makes a set of interactive components available that help users to find their desired information and extend their state of knowledge as well.       Publications Submitted papers: BEPPLER, Fabiano D.; FONSECA, Frederico T.; PACHECO, Roberto C. S. Ontology-Driven Information Retrieval: A Hermeneutical Approach to Information Seeking Behaviour. 2007 Abstract: Information Retrieval (IR) research has made a great progress in the last few years. However, extracting valuable information from IR systems is still very time consuming. Common problems affecting users, besides uncertainty and anxiety, are deficient query definition, information overload, and poor system interactivity. In our approach we addressed this uncertainty and anxiety which are part of the search process. If the user does not know exactly what s/he wants, how can a framework help in the information seeking process? We resorted to philosophy and the hermeneutic circle of Heidegger and Gadamer to provide the principles of such a framework. In our implementation of the hermeneutic circle in an IR system users develop their ideas while browsing the information and the concepts that represent the information. We chose ontologies to implement this hermeneutic approach. Ontologies improve IR systems regarding its retrieval and presentation of information, which make the task of finding information more effective, efficient, and interactive. We called our framework Hermeneus, which in Greek means the interpreter or translator. Hermeneus works as an intermediary that facilitates the user to move from the initial state of information need to the goal state of resolution. Our system intends to be the bridge between the user's question and the answer to be found while s/he navigates in the ontology concepts and the instances of these concepts in a back and forth way. BEPPLER, Fabiano D.; FONSECA, Frederico T.; PACHECO, Roberto C. S. Hermeneus: An Architecture for an Ontology-Enabled Information Retrieval. 2007 Abstract: Ontologies improve IR systems regarding its retrieval and presentation of information, which make the task of finding information more effective, efficient, and interactive. In this paper we argue that ontologies also greatly improve the engineering of such systems. We created a framework that uses ontology to drive the process of engineering an IR system. We developed a prototype that shows how a domain specialist without knowledge in the IR field can build an IR system with interactive components. The resulting system provides support for users not only to find their information needs but also to extend their state of knowledge. This way, our approach to ontology-enabled information retrieval addresses both the engineering aspect described here and also the usability aspect described elsewhere. People Fabiano D. Beppler is a Doctorate Student at the Knowledge Engineering and Management (EGC) at The Federal University of Santa Catarina, a Visiting Scholar at IST, the College of Information Sciences and Technology at the Pennsylvania State University, and also a Researcher at Stela Institute. His research is on Information Retrieval (IR), Information Seeking, and Ontologies. Ontology, which is a technology that can give support for the development of more intelligent systems, can be used to enhance information retrieval systems (e.g., assist users to understand the knowledge of a domain, compose better queries - semantic queries, etc.) so as to develop more interactive environments and to provide more accurate answers. Such information retrieval systems can be an intermediary, as described by information seeking models, that can facilitate the user to move from the initial state of information needs to the goal state of resolution. Frederico T. Fonseca is an Associate Professor at IST, the College of Information Sciences and Technology at The Pennsylvania State University. His research goes from ontology-driven information systems (how we use the semantic models called computational ontologies to create information systems) to fundamental ontology in the philosophical sense (the basic foundation of all the sciences).  Based on the hermeneutics philosophy developed by Heidegger and Gadamer, he is trying to go back and forth between Philosophy and ontology engineering. Roberto C. S. Pacheco is a Professor at Knowledge Engineering and Management (EGC) and Informatics and Statistics (INE) both at The Federal University of Santa Catarina and also a Researcher at Stela Institute. His main research is about knowledge engineering (e.g., CommonKADS methodology and ontologies), information and knowledge-based systems, social networks, and eGov plataforms.   All rights reserved.