Title: Personalised distributed information retrieval-based agents

Authors: Samir Kechid, Habiba Drias

Addresses: Faculty of Electrical and Computer Science, Research Laboratory in Artificial Intelligence (LRIA), Department of Computer Science, USTHB, El Alia BP 32, Bab Ezzouar 16111, Algiers. ' Faculty of Electrical and Computer Science, Research Laboratory in Artificial Intelligence (LRIA), Department of Computer Science, USTHB, El Alia BP 32, Bab Ezzouar 16111, Algiers

Abstract: This paper proposes a new approach using a multi agents system for personalising the distributed information retrieval (DIR). Most prior research in DIR focused on selecting and merging information that has the most relevant content according to the query, but ignored the user|s specific needs. Our approach extends the state-of-the-art in a DIR. Firstly, it develops an agent called user-agent for managing the user profile. Secondly, it develops an agent called source-agent for each information source in order to manage its information source. Finally, it develops an agent called agent-broker for cooperating between user-agent and each source-agent in order to select the best source and merge their best documents in response to the user|s query. The approach has been experimented with several known information sources. The experimental results show that the approach: (1) improve the relevance of the result, (2) reduce the response times and (3) improve the system extensibility.

Keywords: distributed information retrieval; multi-agent systems; MAS; user profiles; source profiles; source selection; result merging; agent-based systems; personalisation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISTA.2010.033896

International Journal of Intelligent Systems Technologies and Applications, 2010 Vol.9 No.1, pp.49 - 74

Published online: 03 Jul 2010 *

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