The Role of Context in Information Retrieval

The scope for information retrieval applications continues to growth to encompass larger and more diverse archives and new computing environments. The consequent increased demands on information retrieval systems continue to motivate research into new and more efficient search technologies. Users of information retrieval systems work in personal and physical contexts, while the documents containing the information they seek often relate to specific contexts. It is argued that taking account of context can improve information retrieval effectiveness. While potential use of context has certainly been under explored, it is already present in established techniques such as relevance feedback. The emergence of new information retrieval environments, such as those associated with mobile computing, raises new challenges for information retrieval for which greater use of context may form a important component. Among the many questions raised by attempting to perform information retrieval in context are issues of how algorithms might be extended or developed to facilitate use of context, does the user need to be actively involved to make use of context, where should the context information come from, and how might the effectiveness of such methods be tested in extended evaluation frameworks?