Information handling mechanism
First Claim
1. An information handling mechanism to determine if an information source is applicable to a given information need comprisinga) an interface connected to a communication channel for receiving a communication from a user;
- b) a specialist database containing information relevant to a specialist subject;
c) means for identifying concepts in the user communication;
d) means for generating concept models indicating occurrences of concepts in the specialist database and in a less specialist database;
e) means for calculating relative probability, responsive to the means for generating concept models and the means for identifying concepts in the user communication, that the identified concepts could have been generated by each concept model and to provide an output indicative of the relevance of the specialist database to the communication; and
f) an action selector for generating a signal, responsive to the output of the means for calculating relative probability, arranged either to give a user an indication of the relevance of the specialist database or to automatically redirect the communication in a way dependent on such relevance.
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Accused Products
Abstract
Conventional electronic information retrieval systems using specialist databases assume that the database being searched is appropriate to the search being conducted.
The invention solves the problem that the above assumption may be incorrect. It does this by providing mechanisms (4, 4A and 4B) for identifying concepts respectively in: the search input question, a specialist database and a non-specialist database.
A comparator 8 and associated mechanisms are able to analyze how the specialist database differs from the non-specialist database and to use this information to derive an indication of the ability of the specialist database to answer the input question. This indication can be fed to the user via interface 1 or in an alternative arrangement could be used to block inappropriate information.
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Citations
13 Claims
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1. An information handling mechanism to determine if an information source is applicable to a given information need comprising
a) an interface connected to a communication channel for receiving a communication from a user; -
b) a specialist database containing information relevant to a specialist subject; c) means for identifying concepts in the user communication; d) means for generating concept models indicating occurrences of concepts in the specialist database and in a less specialist database; e) means for calculating relative probability, responsive to the means for generating concept models and the means for identifying concepts in the user communication, that the identified concepts could have been generated by each concept model and to provide an output indicative of the relevance of the specialist database to the communication; and f) an action selector for generating a signal, responsive to the output of the means for calculating relative probability, arranged either to give a user an indication of the relevance of the specialist database or to automatically redirect the communication in a way dependent on such relevance. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13)
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Specification