With many information retrieval (IR) schemes available, researchers have begun to investigate the benefits of combining results of different IR schemes to improve performance, in the process called "data fusion." This article investigates the predictive power of two variables--similarity of efficacy and dissimilarity of outputs--in simple…

In the "Ant World" project, items to be retrieved are "quests" represented by entire collections of judged documents. To save space and time, methods were developed for representing these complex entities in a short string of about 1,000 bytes, called a Digital Information Pheromone (DIP). Principles are presented for…

Describes a model of information seeking/retrieval in which the user's quest is seen as a generalized abstract "response function" representing the user's response to the information delivered by the system. The concept of an information quest, "Q," is illustrated with data collected in the Ant World Project at Rutgers…

Reports on an experiment conducted using the "AntWorld" system, a collaborative information finding system for the Internet, to explore the effect of added motivation on users' behavior. Findings suggest that for the system to be effective, users must be motivated either by the environment, or by incentives within the system. (Author/AEF)

Examines a statistical model in which the users of an online system continually update their estimated probability of success, and quit or continue the search according to the expected utility of each action. The implications for search strategies are discussed. (Author/EM)

Illustrates how various key abstractions of information finding, such as document relevance, a desired number of relevant documents, discouragement, exhaustion, and satisfaction can be modeled using the Petri Net framework. Shows that this model leads naturally to a new approach to collection of user data, and to analysis of transaction logs.…