Automatic Reference Librarians for the World Wide Web

众所周知，网络是人类最大、增长最快的数字信息库。 许多信息集可通过互联网查阅，其中大多数将提供可搜索的网络界面。虽然有些收藏品有广泛的材料，但趋势表明，专门收藏品的数量呈爆炸式增长，内容狭窄但非常深刻。因此，用户面临的主要挑战将是选择能够回答其查询的网络信息源。在实体图书馆中，用户依赖参考馆员帮助他们找到正确的资源，但是，尽管人类图书馆员在使用网络方面变得越来越复杂，但他们只是解决方案的一部分。 我们需要更强大的自动参考工具来帮助人们有效地从Web上检索高质量的信息。通常，参考图书馆员不是调查主题的专家（例如，计算流体动力学），但他们擅长识别相关资源（例如，《国际流体动力学杂志》），并采取适当的策略来获得必要的信息。 这个建议的中心目标是创建一个软件代理，它可以提供参考情报-对复杂技术主题的有限理解，但对如何以及在何处找到万维网上的高质量信息有非常复杂的理解。

By all accounts, the Web is humanity's largest and fastest growing repository of digital information. Many collections of information are Internet-accessible, and most will provide a searchable Web interface. While some collections have a broad array of materials, trends show an explosion in the number of specializedcollections with narrow but very deep content. Thus a principle challenge facing users will be the selection of Web information sources capable of answering their query. In a physical library, users rely on a reference librarian to help point them at the correct resource, but while human librarians are becoming increasinglysophisticated in their use of the Web, they are only part of the solution. We need more powerful automatic reference tools to help people efficiently retrieve high quality information from the Web. Typically, reference librarians are not specialists in the topic of inquiry (e.g., computational fluid dynamics) but they are expert at identifying relevant resources (e.g., The International Journal of Fluid Dynamics) and at appropriate strategies for obtaining the necessary information. The central objective of this proposal is to create software agents that posses reference intelligence --- a limited understanding of complex technical topics, but a very sophisticated understanding of how and where to find high-quality information on the World Wide Web.