Dialogue – Driven Information Retrieval

Web search engines are built for helping web users to locate information quickly and efficiently. However, despite the fact that search engines provide considerable assistance in locating information, one of the main difficulties remains the ambiguity and uncertainty involved in matching information needs against documents which might satisfy those needs. A possible solution is the application of natural language dialogue systems, an area that is becoming increasingly prominent in the field of natural language processing. Dialogue Systems aim at conversing with a human using a logical and articulate structure. Dialogue systems have been shown to work well over structured knowledge sources. Imposing a dialogue system on an intranet however is a new challenge. Here we are looking at combining a dialogue system with the power of a standard search engine.