Finding Information Faster by Tracing My Colleagues' Trails

Abstract

Knowledge workers are confronted with the challenge of efficient information retrieval in enterprises, which is one of the most important barriers to knowledge reuse. This problem has been intensified in recent years by several organizational developments such as increasing data volume and number of data sources. In this chapter, a reference algorithm for enterprise search is developed that integrates aspects from personalized, social, collaborative, and dynamic search to consider the different natures and requirements of enterprise and web search. Because of the modular structure of the algorithm, it can easily be adapted by enterprises to their specificities by concretization. The components that can be configured during the adaptation process are discussed. Furthermore, the performance of a typical instance of the algorithm is investigated through a laboratory experiment. This instance is found to outperform rather traditional approaches to enterprise search.