Search Solutions is managed by the Information Retrieval Specialist Group of the British Computer Society and is the only broad-spectrum search event outside of the USA. The conference was held at the BCS London office on 23 November, preceded by a day of Tutorials.  This was the first on-site Search Solutions event since 2019. My perspectives on the morning sessions of the Conference are here in Part 1, with the afternoon sessions and the Search Industry Awards in Part 2. There is a summary of each presentation, a link to the author and also links to research papers and web sites mention ..read more

For many years I have expressed my reservations about how effective enterprise search can be in identifying experts within an organisation. Yet this remains a core ‘benefit’ that is visibly promoted by search vendors. Often I feel like a voice crying in the wilderness (see this post from 2017) so I was very encouraged to find a recent research paper from three Microsoft authors which addresses the ethical and social considerations in automatic expert identification and people recommendation in organizational knowledge management systems. To quote from the abstract of the paper “While such syst ..read more

Over the last few years I have been collecting and collating research papers and conference papers that are in some way relevant to enterprise search. There are very few ‘case studies’ of enterprise search implementations but there is a significant amount of research into techniques that could in principle be applied to ‘document-centric’ search applications. In total I now have almost 1500 research papers. My categorization scheme broke down several years ago and I’ve decided that it is now time to rebuild it, initially as a list of categories and then perhaps as a taxonomy. The list of 21 ca ..read more

The concept of ‘relevance’ lies at the core of enterprise search development and assessment. Many (too many!) vendors focus on the promise of presenting the most relevant results on the first search results page (SERP) using AI. The concept dates back to development work at Ramo-Woolridge Corp on search applications by Melvin Maron who in 1958 recognized that a binary Yes/No assessment of the value of a document was far too limited and that there was a gradation across a document set. Maron’s initial idea was then developed further by his colleague Larry Kuhns who evolved the concept of a vect ..read more

There is probably no more difficult task in information management in being the Editor of a multi-author on any topic, and the level of difficulty goes up by an order of magnitude when the topic is taxonomy management. Taxonomies (and the strap line ‘Practical Approaches to Developing and Managing Vocabularies for Digital Information’) has been edited by Helen Lippell. Helen brings not only many years of taxonomy development experience to the role but also a very strong commitment to ‘getting the message across’ as chair of Taxonomy Boot Camp London events. Helen has brought together eighteen ..read more

There are many books about knowledge management but very few about what I might refer to as IKM (Information and Knowledge Management) technologies. What is distinctive about this book is that it spans the crevasse between KM and IT and does so with considerable flair. The authors, Zach Wahl and  Joseph Hilger established Enterprise Knowledge (based in Arlington VA) close to decade ago and since then have built a company with a very high reputation for innovative approaches to solving KM challenges. To quote from the Preface of Making Knowledge Management Clickable, their book “bridges th ..read more

Attending the Intranet Italia Day in Milan last month I spotted a very unusual book on one of the exhibitions stands. In the business of intranet and digital workplace development we are constantly trying to develop interactive applications that deliver an intuitive and engaging user experience. Understanding Experience is a graphic novel guide to the use and value of human-centered design principles for products and services. It is the result of the partnership between Stefano Dominici (a highly respected design strategist and university lecturer in Italy) and Laura Angelucci, a cartoonist an ..read more

It seems to be implicit in information retrieval research that ‘users’ have such a competence in reading that a consideration of reading ability can be discounted from the research analysis. If only that was the case! The reality is that perhaps one in ten employees is on the dyslexia spectrum and in global businesses many employees are writing text and submitting search queries in a second language. In an earlier post I have highlighted the issue of perceptual speed on the evaluation of search results. Even something as basic as line length needs careful consideration of how people read digit ..read more

This year IntraTeam has replaced its annual three-day conference with three one-day themed events. The second of these took place on 13 June with the focus of findability in its widest sense, covering not just ‘search’ but also information architecture and navigation. The scene was set by Kurt Kragh Sorenson with his opening poll of the delegates. Using Mentimeter the delegates were invited to vote on whether their enterprise search or intranet implementation was delivering search satisfaction. It came as no surprise to me that most of the delegates were some distance away from ‘very satisfied ..read more

The primary theme of many of the ‘strategy’ presentations at Intranet Italia Day 2022 was the importance of a structured approach to defining user and business requirements. Many speakers emphasized the importance of in-depth interviews to gain an understanding of the information culture of the organisation rather than relying on surveys, an approach emphasized by Nigel Williams in his presentation on the development of the intranet at the Royal Society of Chemistry. However there is a role for surveys, and Christiaan Ludwig described his very powerful top task approach, pioneered many years a ..read more