Monthly Archives: May 2013

Query recommendation for children

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by Sergio Duarte Torres, Djoerd Hiemstra, Ingmar Weber, Pavel Serdyukov. 

One of the biggest problems that children experience while searching the web occurs during the query formulation process. Children have been found to struggle formulating queries based on keywords given their limited vocabulary and their difficulty to choose the right keywords.
In this work we propose a method that utilizes tags from social media to suggest queries related to children topics. Concretely we propose a simple yet effective approach to bias a random walk defined on a bipartite graph of web resources and tags through keywords that are more commonly used to describe resources for children. We evaluate our method using a large query log sample of queries aimed at retrieving information for children. We show that our method outperforms query suggestions of state-of-the-art search engines and state-of-the art query suggestions based on random walks. Read the paper.

Cross-lingual alignment and completion of Wikipedia templates

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by Gosse Bouma, Sergio Duarte Torres and Zahurul Islam. 

For many languages, the size of Wikipedia is an order of magnitude smaller than the English Wikipedia. We present a method for cross-lingual alignment of template and infobox attributes in Wikipedia. The alignment is used to add and complete templates and infoboxes in one language with information derived from Wikipedia in another language. We show that alignment between English and Dutch Wikipedia is accurate and that the result can be used to expand the number of template attribute-value pairs in Dutch Wikipedia by 50%. Furthermore, the alignment provides valuable information for normalization of template and attribute names and can be used to detect potential inconsistencies. Read the paper.

EmSe: initial evaluation of a child-friendly medical search system

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by The PuppyIR team.

When undergoing medical treatment in combination with extended stays in hospitals, children have been frequently found to develop an interest in their condition and the course of treatment. A natural means of searching for related information would be to use a web search engine. The medical domain, however, imposes several key challenges on young and inexperienced searchers, such as difficult terminology, potentially frightening topics or non-objective information offered by lobbyists or pharmaceutical companies. To address these problems, we present the design and usability study of EmSe, a search service for children in a hospital environment. Read the paper.

Web search query assistance functionality for young audiences

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by Carsten Eickhoff, Tamara Polajnar, Karl Gyllstrom, Sergio Duarte Torres and Richard Glassey.

The Internet plays an important role in people’s daily lives. This is not only true for adults, but also holds for children; however, current web search engines are designed with adult users and their cognitive abilities in mind. Consequently, children face considerable barriers when using these information systems. In this work, we demonstrate the use of query assistance and search moderation techniques as well as appropriate interface design to overcome or mitigate these challenges. Read the paper.

Query log analysis in the context of Information Retrieval for children

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by Sergio Duarte Torres, Djoerd Hiemstra and Pavel Serdyukov. 

In this paper we analyze queries and sessions intended to satisfy children’s information needs using a large-scale query log. The aim of this analysis is twofold: i) To identify differences between such queries and sessions, and general queries and sessions; ii) To enhance the query log by including annotations of queries, sessions, and actions for future research on information retrieval for children. We found statistically significant differences between the set of general purpose and queries seeking for content intended for children. We show that our findings are consistent with previous studies on the physical behavior of children using Web search engines. Read the poster paper.

An analysis of queries intended to search information for children

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by Sergio Duarte Torres, Djoerd Hiemstra and Pavel Serdyukov. 

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. Read the paper.

Wikipedia entity retrieval for Dutch and Spanish

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by Gosse Bouma and Sergio Duarte Torres.

We developed two systems (for Dutch and Spanish) for the GikiCLEF task, in which Wikipedia pages have to be found that match a description in natural language. We concentrated on linguistic analysis of the query, for mapping the question onto the most relevant Wikipedia categories, and for extracting additional constraints that matching pages have to satisfy. In addition, for Spanish we experimented with query expansion for improved recall of the IR process. In both the Dutch and Spanish system we tried to incorporate additional knowledge sources (WordNet, Yago, DbPedia) for better question analysis and retrieval results. The Dutch system obtained a GikiCLEF score of 2.5 (7th overall and 7th for Dutch). The Spanish system was still under development at the time of the official evaluation, and performed poorly. We show that the completed system would have performed well at the 2009 task. Read the paper.

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.