SearchQuest : an enterprise-wide on-line library system

Abstract

With the exponential growth of the Web and the emergence of search engines, physical resources (with particular reference to books) are being consulted as a secondary source of information. The major drawback is inadequate indexing and searching facilities. This thesis proposes SearchQuest, a solution that brings together the Internet, public and private libraries, making them equally searchable through a common and simple interface. Through SearchQuest we propose a new approach to promote reliable pages on the Internet. Bookmarks are considered more reliable than other Web pages since they have been marked to be particularly relevant by previous users. Bookmarks are shared amongst colleagues at work, building an automatic recommendation system. Query expansion is used in an attempt to search the meaning of a query rather than just the keywords. To do this, an ontology thesaurus is automatically constructed and maintained for each user.