Data mining, interactive semantic structuring, and collaboration: A diversity-aware method for sense-making in search

We present the Damilicious method and tool which help users in sense-making of the results of their literature searches on the Web: on an individual level, by supporting the construction of semantics of the domain described by their search term, and on the collective level, by encouraging users to explore and selectively re-use other users’ semantics. We use a combination of clustering, classification and interactivity to obtain and apply diverse semantics of thematic areas, and to identify diversity between users. This tool can help users take different perspectives on search results and thereby reflect more deeply about resources on the Web and their meaning. In addition, the method can help to develop quantitative measures of diversity; we propose diversity of resource groupings and diversity of users as two examples.