Knowledge Maps and Information Retrieval (KMIR)
This is an incremental step aimed at improving information retrieval for users in digital libraries by bridging two research communities.
The paper addresses the disconnect between knowledge map creators and Information Retrieval specialists, proposing a workshop to integrate interactive knowledge maps into search interfaces for more precise information discovery.
Information systems usually show as a particular point of failure the vagueness between user search terms and the knowledge orders of the information space in question. Some kind of guided searching therefore becomes more and more important in order to precisely discover information without knowing the right search terms. Knowledge maps of digital library collections are promising navigation tools through knowledge spaces but still far away from being applicable for searching digital libraries. However, there is no continuous knowledge exchange between the "map makers" on the one hand and the Information Retrieval (IR) specialists on the other hand. Thus, there is also a lack of models that properly combine insights of the two strands. The proposed workshop aims at bringing together these two communities: experts in IR reflecting on visual enhanced search interfaces and experts in knowledge mapping reflecting on visualizations of the content of a collection that might also present a context for a search term in a visual manner. The intention of the workshop is to raise awareness of the potential of interactive knowledge maps for information seeking purposes and to create a common ground for experiments aiming at the incorporation of knowledge maps into IR models at the level of the user interface.