Panel: User Modeling and User Interfaces

I will consider the problem of helping user’s retrieve information from large diverse collections of textual materials such as bibliographic databases, electronic bulletin boards and online manuals, although I believe that many of my arguments apply to other interactive environments as well. Information retrieval systems like this must handle a heterogeneous population of users, and even a single user will have a range of information needs including very specific requests as well as more general and often ill-defined topical searches.