Personalized Information Search and Retrieval Through a Desktop Application

An important aspect of current Search Engines is that they answerqueries crudely rather than learning the long-term requirements specific to a givenuser or, more precisely, to a specific information seeking task. If the same query issubmitted by different users to a typical search engine, it will probably return thesame result, regardless of who submitted the query. In our opinion, smart searchingis definitely the next level of search technology. In this paper we present a PersonalizedInformation Search Assistant, PISA, an environment where the userwill not only be able to search/retrieve/be informed about documents relevant toher interests, but she will also be provided with highly personalized tools for organizingdocuments and information into a personal workspace. The major noveltyof PI SA is that it combines all the characteristics of an on-line metasearch systemwith working space organization features in a desktop application, providingthe user with a single user point of view personalized search environment.