Information Access in the Context of Everyday Work

We propose a new autonomous Web assistant that draws on a number of innovative technologies in order to intelligently mine information with a minimum of human interaction. The Active Web Assistant (AWARE) will utilize a novel two-promged approach to information retrieval. By simultaneously acting as a context-sensitive search engine and as a proactive information resource development system, AWARE will be able to autonomously acquire and organize information resources in the context of their everyday work. Additionally, AWARE will work in the background to provide continuously improving results over time by applying progressively more sophisticated document clasification, document summarization, and graphically facilitated relevance feedback techniques. AWARE will provide NASA personnel with a dramatically improved awareness of Web information pertinent to their ongoing tasks. The prototype tool developed in our Phase I effort will prove the feasibility of our approach and provide the basis for a complete Phase II implementation of AWARE.