Category Archives: 2013

Vertical Selection in the Information Domain of Children

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by Sergio Duarte Torres, Djoerd Hiemstra and Theo Huibers 

In this paper we explore the vertical selection methods in aggregated search in the specific domain of topics for children between 7 and 12 years old. A test collection consisting of 25 verticals, 3.8K queries and relevant assessments for a large sample of these queries mapping relevant verticals to queries was built. We gather relevant assessment by envisaging two aggregated search systems: one in which the Web vertical is always displayed and in which each vertical is assessed independently from the web vertical. We show that both approaches lead to a di?erent set of relevant verticals and that the former is prone to bias of visually oriented verticals. In the second part of this paper we estimate the size of the verticals for the target domain. We show that employing the global size and domain specific size estimation of the verticals lead to significant improvements when using state-of-the art methods of vertical selection. We also introduce a novel vertical and query representation based on tags from social media and we show that its use lead to significant performance gains. Read the paper

This paper has been nominated for the best student paper award at JCDL 2013.

Information Retrieval for Children: Search behavior and Solutions

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Seminar given at GREYC (University of Caen Lower Normandy).

The majority of children and teenagers are active users of the Internet for education and entertainment purposes, thus developing children’s abilities to find and understand information is a key in their development as young adults.However, children’sability to use the Internet is severely hampered by the lack of appropriate search tools. Most Information Retrieval (IR) systems are designed for adults: they return information in a form that is unsuitable for children.The aim of this presentation is twofold: (i) introduce the research lines and outcome of the PuppyIR project which is aimed at providing a infrastructure and framework for developing child- focused information service; and (ii) explore the outcome of our research on understanding the search behavior of children in the Internet and provide a brief description of query recommendation mechanisms tailored at young users. Get the slides.

Workshop at COMMIT: Planning your international career

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Workshop organized by Peter Apers and Iddo Bante. During this workshop we will share experience and instruments to facilitate the next step in your career at an international level. Talks will be given on Horizon 2020, ERC Grants, ICT Labs, working for international R&D labs. We will also address your requests for instruments for your next step.
Presentations by: Iddo Bante, managing director at the CTIT at University Twente and Sergio Duarte Torres