Topic Distillation in Desktop Search

• Published in: Database and Expert Systems Applications pp. 478 - 488
• Main Authors: Penev, Alex, Gebski, Matthew, Wong, Raymond K.
• Format: Book Chapter Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin, Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2006; Springer
• Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science
• Subjects: Applied sciences; Artificial intelligence; Authority List; Authority Score; Computer science; control theory; systems; Computer systems and distributed systems. User interface; Connectivity Analysis; Exact sciences and technology; Information systems. Data bases; Matrix Exponentiation; Memory organisation. Data processing; Query Topic; Software; Local search; Personal computer; Accessibility; Expert system; World wide web; Algorithmics; Database; Information retrieval; Internet; Data structure; Artificial intelligence
• ISBN: 3540378715; 9783540378716
• ISSN: 0302-9743; 1611-3349
• DOI: 10.1007/11827405_47

Desktop Search, the search across local storage such as a personal computer, is a common practice among computer users. There has been much activity in Web-related Information Retrieval, but Desktop Search has only recently increased in popularity. As the structure and accessibility of data in a local environment is different to the Web, new algorithmic possibilities arise for Desktop Search. We apply a connectivity analysis approach to the local environment—a filesystem. We describe how it can be used in parallel with existing tools to provide “more useful” ranked results. Our evaluation reveals that such an approach has promise, and we conclude that exploiting the organization of a filesystem is beneficial for Desktop Search.