Department of Computer Science and Technology

Technical reports

Architecture problems in the construction of expert systems for document retrieval

Karen Spärck Jones

December 1986, 28 pages

DOI: 10.48456/tr-131

Abstract

The idea of an expert system front end offering the user effective direct accessto a document retrieval system is an attractive one. The paper considers two specific approaches to the construction of such an expert interface, Belkin and Brooks and their colleagues’ treatment of the functions of such a front end based on the analysis of human intermediaries, and Pollitt’s experimental implementation of a query formulator for searching Cancerline. The distributed expert system model proposed by Belkin and Brooks is a plausable one, and Pollitt’s system can be regarded as a first step towards it. But there are major problems about this type of architecture, and the paper argues in particular that in seeking to develop more powerful front ends of the kind envisaged there is one important issue, the nature of the language used for communication between the contributing experts, that requires for attention than it has hitherto received.

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BibTeX record

@TechReport{UCAM-CL-TR-131,
  author =	 {Sp{\"a}rck Jones, Karen},
  title = 	 {{Architecture problems in the construction of expert
         	   systems for document retrieval}},
  year = 	 1986,
  month = 	 dec,
  url = 	 {https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-131.pdf},
  institution =  {University of Cambridge, Computer Laboratory},
  doi = 	 {10.48456/tr-131},
  number = 	 {UCAM-CL-TR-131}
}