A domain-driven approach to improving search effectiveness in traditional online catalogs

Search performance can be greatly improved by using domain knowledge to assist users in developing a problem specification tailored to the information contained in the system. A methodology is presented for utilizing intelligent information retrieval techniques and domain-specific knowledge to improve user searching. For databases involving a relatively narrow domain, a “system thesaurus” combined with expert systems technology can be used to create an intelligent front end to assist the user in retrieving information with greater precision and recall. Evaluation of the prototype showed greatly improved search effectiveness and satisfaction over the traditional catalog system.